LIBRARY 

OF  THF, 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 

GIFT    OF 

luSL 


REVOLUTION 
AND    OTHER    ESSAYS 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK    •    BOSTON    •    CHICAGO 
ATLANTA  •    SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON   •    BOMBAY   •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 

TORONTO 


REVOLUTION 
AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 


BY 


JACK    LONDON 


AUTHOR    OF    "MARTIN    EDEN,"     "  THE    CALL    OF    THE    WILD," 
"WHITE    FANG,"     ETC.,    ETC. 


OF   THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


THE    MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

1910 

jlll  rights  reserved 


f* 


: 

COPYRIGHT,  1910, 


BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  March,  1910. 


J.  S.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


"  History  warns  us  that  it  is  the  customary  fate  of  new  truths 
to  begin  as  heresies  and  to  end  as  superstitions."  —  HUXLEY. 


198448 


CONTENTS 


PACK 


REVOLUTION        .          .          •  •  .  .  .  .          i 

THE  SOMNAMBULISTS    .  .  .  .  .  •        39 

THE  DIGNITY  OF  DOLLARS   .  .  .  .  .  •        55 

GOLIAH     .          .          .          .  .  .  .  •  .71 

THE  GOLDEN  POPPY    .          ..  .  .  .  .117 

THE  SHRINKAGE  OF  THE  PLANET  .  .  .  .  .139 

THE  HOUSE  BEAUTIFUL         •  .  .  »  •  ,159 

THE  GOLD  HUNTERS  OF  THE  NORTH  .  .  .  .177 

FOMA  GORDYEEFF         .          .  .  •  •  .  •     2O$ 

THESE  BONES  SHALL  RISE  AGAIN  .  •  .  .  .217 

THE  OTHER  ANIMALS.          •  .  •  .  .  .235 

THE  YELLOW  PERIL     .          .  .  .  .  .  •      267 

WHAT  LIFE  MEANS  TO  ME  .  .  .  •  .  .291 


vii 


REVOLUTION 

The  present  is  enough  for  common  souls, 
Who,  never  looking  forward,  are  indeed 
Mere  clay,  wherein  the  footprints  of  their  age 
Are  petrified  forever." 


IX 


REVOLUTION 


REVOLUTION 

I  RECEIVED  a  letter  the  other  day.  It  was 
from  a  man  in  Arizona.  It  began,  "Dear 
Comrade."  It  ended,  "Yours  for  the  Revo 
lution."  I  replied  to  the  letter,  and  my  letter  began, 
"Dear  Comrade."  It  ended,  "Yours  for  the  Revo 
lution."  In  the  United  States  there  are  400,000 
men,  of  men  and  women  nearly  1,000,000,  who  be 
gin  their  letters  "Dear  Comrade,"  and  end  them 
"Yours  for  the  Revolution."  In  Germany  there  are 
3,000,000  men  who  begin  their  letters  "Dear  Com 
rade"  and  end  them  "Yours  for  the  Revolution";  in 
France,  1,000,000  men;  in  Austria,  800,000  men; 
in  Belgium,  300,000  men;  in  Italy,  250,000  men; 
in  England,  100,000  men;  in  Switzerland,  100,000 
men;  in  Denmark,  55,000  men;  in  Sweden,  50,000 
men ;  in  Holland,  40,000  men ;  in  Spain,  30,000  men 
—  comrades  all,  and  revolutionists. 

These  are  numbers  which  dwarf  the  grand  armies 
of  Napoleon  and  Xerxes.     But  they  are   numbers 

3 


4  REVOLUTION 

not  of  conquest  and  maintenance  of  the  established 
order,  but  of  conquest  and  revolution.  They  com 
pose,  when  the  roll  is  called,  an  army  of  7,000,000 
men,  who,  in  accordance  with  the  conditions  of 
to-day,  are  righting  with  all  their  might  for  the  con 
quest  of  the  wealth  of  the  world  and  for  the  complete 
overthrow  of  existing  society. 

There  has  never  been  anything  like  this  revolution 
in  the  history  of  the  world.  There  is  nothing  analo 
gous  between  it  and  the  American  Revolution  or  the 
French  Revolution.  It  is  unique,  colossal.  Other 
revolutions  compare  with  it  as  asteroids  compare 
with  the  sun.  It  is  alone  of  its  kind,  the  first  world- 
revolution  in  a  world  whose  history  is  replete  with 
revolutions.  And  not  only  this,  for  it  is  the  first  or 
ganized  movement  of  men  to  become  a  world  move 
ment,  limited  only  by  the  limits  of  the  planet. 

This  revolution  is  unlike  all  other  revolutions  in 
many  respects.  It  is  not  sporadic.  It  is  not  a  flame 
of  popular  discontent,  arising  in  a  day  and  dying 
down  in  a  day.  It  is  older  than  the  present  genera 
tion.  It  has  a  history  and  traditions,  and  a  martyr- 
roll  only  less  extensive  possibly  than  the  martyr-roll 
of  Christianity.  It  has  also  a  literature  a  myriad 


REVOLUTION  5 

times  more  imposing,  scientific,  and  scholarly  than 
the  literature  of  any  previous  revolution. 

They  call  themselves  "comrades,"  these  men, 
comrades  in  the  socialist  revolution.  Nor  is  the  word 
empty  and  meaningless,  coined  of  mere  lip  service. 
It  knits  men  together  as  brothers,  as  men  should  be 
knit  together  who  stand  shoulder  to  shoulder  under 
the  red  banner  of  revolt.  This  red  banner,  by  the 
way,  symbolizes  the  brotherhood  of  man,  and  does 
not  symbolize  the  incendiarism  that  instantly  con 
nects  itself  with  the  red  banner  in  the  affrighted  bour 
geois  mind.  The  comradeship  of  the  revolutionists 
is  alive  and  warm.  It  passes  over  geographical 
lines,  transcends  race  prejudice,  and  has  even  proved 
itself  mightier  than  the  Fourth  of  July,  spread-eagle 
Americanism  of  our  forefathers.  The  French  so 
cialist  workingmen  and  the  German  socialist  work- 
ingmen  forget  Alsace  and  Lorraine,  and,  when  war 
threatens,  pass  resolutions  declaring  that  as  work 
ingmen  and  comrades  they  have  no  quarrel  with 
each  other.  Only  the  other  day,  when  Japan  and 
Russia  sprang  at  each  other's  throats,  the  revolu 
tionists  of  Japan  addressed  the  following  message  to 
the  revolutionists  of  Russia:  "Dear  Comrades  — 


6  REVOLUTION 

Your  government  and  ours  have  recently  plunged 
into  war  to  carry  out  their  imperialistic  tendencies, 
but  for  us  socialists  there  are  no  boundaries,  race, 
country,  or  nationality.  We  are  comrades,  brothers 
and  sisters,  and  have  no  reason  to  fight.  Your 
enemies  are  not  the  Japanese  people,  but  our  milita 
rism  and  so-called  patriotism.  Patriotism  and  mili 
tarism  are  our  mutual  enemies." 

In  January,  1905,  throughout  the  United  States 
the  socialists  held  mass-meetings  to  express  their 
sympathy  for  their  struggling  comrades,  the  revo 
lutionists  of  Russia,  and,  more  to  the  point,  to  fur 
nish  the  sinews  of  war  by  collecting  money  and 
cabling  it  to  the  Russian  leaders. 

The  fact  of  this  call  for  money,  and  the  ready 
response,  and  the  very  wording  of  the  call,  make  a 
striking  and  practical  demonstration  of  the  inter 
national  solidarity  of  this  world  revolution:  "What 
ever  may  be  the  immediate  results  of  the  present 
revolt  in  Russia,  the  socialist  propaganda  in  that 
country  has  received  from  it  an  impetus  unparalleled 
in  the  history  of  modern  class  wars.  The  heroic 
battle  for  freedom  is  being  fought  almost  exclusively 
by  the  Russian  working-class  under  the  intellectual 


REVOLUTION  7 

leadership  of  Russian  socialists,  thus  once  more 
demonstrating  the  fact  that  the  class-conscious  work- 
ingmen  have  become  the  vanguard  of  all  liberating 
movements  of  modern  times." 

Here  are  7,000,000  comrades  in  an  organized, 
international,  world-wide,  revolutionary  movement. 
Here  is  a  tremendous  human  force.  It  must  be 
reckoned  with.  Here  is  power.  And  here  is  ro 
mance  —  romance  so  colossal  that  it  seems  to  be 
beyond  the  ken  of  ordinary  mortals.  These  revo 
lutionists  are  swayed  by  great  passion.  They  have 
a  keen  sense  of  personal  right,  much  of  reverence  for 
humanity,  but  little  reverence,  if  any  at  all,  for  the  rule 
of  the  dead.  They  refuse  to  be  ruled  by  the  dead. 
To  the  bourgeois  mind  their  unbelief  in  the  domi 
nant  conventions  of  the  established  order  is  startling. 
They  laugh  to  scorn  the  sweet  ideals  and  dear  morali 
ties  of  bourgeois  society.  They  intend  to  destroy 
bourgeois  society  with  most  of  its  sweet  ideals  and 
dear  moralities,  and  chiefest  among  these  are  those 
that  group  themselves  under  such  heads  as  private 
ownership  of  capital,  survival  of  the  fittest,  and 
patriotism  —  even  patriotism. 

Such  an  army  of  revolution,  7,000,000  strong,  is 


8  REVOLUTION 

a  thing  to  make  rulers  and  ruling  classes  pause  and 
consider.  The  cry  of  this  army  is,  "No  quarter! 
We  want  all  that  you  possess.  We  will  be  content 
with  nothing  less  than  all  that  you  possess.  We  want 
in  our  hands  the  reins  of  power  and  the  destiny  of 
mankind.  Here  are  our  hands.  They  are  strong 
hands.  We  are  going  to  take  your  governments, 
your  palaces,  and  all  your  purpled  ease  away  from 
you,  and  in  that  day  you  shall  work  for  your  bread 
even  as  the  peasant  in  the  field  or  the  starved  and 
runty  clerk  in  your  metropolises.  Here  are  our 
hands.  They  are  strong  hands." 

Well  may  rulers  and  ruling  classes  pause  and 
consider.  This  is  revolution.  And,  further,  these 
7,000,000  men  are  not  an  army  on  paper.  Their 
fighting  strength  in  the  field  is  7,000,000.  To-day 
they  cast  7,000,000  votes  in  the  civilized  countries 
of  the  world. 

Yesterday  they  were  not  so  strong.  To-morrow 
they  will  be  still  stronger.  And  they  are  fighters. 
They  love  peace.  They  are  unafraid  of  war.  They 
intend  nothing  less  than  to  destroy  existing  capitalist 
society  and  to  take  possession  of  the  whole  world. 
If  the  law  of  the  land  permits,  they  fight  for  this  end 


REVOLUTION  9 

peaceably,  at  the  ballot-box.  If  the  law  of  the 
land  does  not  permit,  and  if  they  have  force  meted 
out  to  them,  they  resort  to  force  themselves.  They 
meet  violence  with  violence.  Their  hands  are  strong 
and  they  are  unafraid.  In  Russia,  for  instance, 
there  is  no  suffrage.  The  government  executes  the 
revolutionists.  The  revolutionists  kill  the  officers  of 
the  government.  The  revolutionists  meet  legal  mur 
der  with  assassination. 

Now  here  arises  a  particularly  significant  phase 
which  would  be  well  for  the  rulers  to  consider.  Let 
me  make  it  concrete.  I  am  a  revolutionist.  Yet 
I  am  a  fairly  sane  and  normal  individual.  I  speak, 
and  I  think,  of  these  assassins  in  Russia  as  "my  com 
rades."  So  do  all  the  comrades  in  America,  and  all 
the  7,000,000  comrades  in  the  world.  Of  what  worth 
an  organized,  international,  revolutionary  movement 
if  our  comrades  are  not  backed  up  the  world  over! 
The  worth  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  we  do  back  up 
the  assassinations  by  our  comrades  in  Russia.  They 
are  not  disciples  of  Tolstoy,  nor  are  we.  We  are 
revolutionists. 

Our  comrades  in  Russia  have  formed  what  they 
call  "The  Fighting  Organization."  This  Fighting 


io  REVOLUTION 

Organization  accused,  tried,  found  guilty,  and  con 
demned  to  death,  one  Sipiaguin,  Minister  of  Interior. 
On  April  2  he  was  shot  and  killed  in  the  Maryinsky 
Palace.  Two  years  later  the  Fighting  Organization 
condemned  to  death  and  executed  another  Minister 
of  Interior,  Von  Plehve.  Having  done  so,  it  issued 
a  document,  dated  July  29,  1904,  setting  forth  the 
counts  of  its  indictment  of  Von  Plehve  and  its  respon 
sibility  for  the  assassination.  Now,  and  to  the  point, 
this  document  was  sent  out  to  the  socialists  of  the 
world,  and  by  them  was  published  everywhere  in  the 
magazines  and  newspapers.  The  point  is,  not  that 
the  socialists  of  the  world  were  unafraid  to  do  it,  not 
that  they  dared  to  do  it,  but  that  they  did  it  as  a  mat 
ter  of  routine,  giving  publication  to  what  may  be 
called  an  official  document  of  the  international  revo 
lutionary  movement. 

These  are  high  lights  upon  the  revolution  — 
granted,  but  they  are  also  facts.  And  they  are  given 
to  the  rulers  and  the  ruling  classes,  not  in  bravado, 
not  to  frighten  them,  but  for  them  to  consider  more 
deeply  the  spirit  and  nature  of  this  world  revolution. 
The  time  has  come  for  the  revolution  to  demand 
consideration.  It  has  fastened  upon  every  civilized 


REVOLUTION  11 

country  in  the  world.  As  fast  as  a  country  becomes 
civilized,  the  revolution  fastens  upon  it.  With  the 
introduction  of  the  machine  into  Japan,  socialism 
was  introduced.  Socialism  marched  into  the  Philip 
pines  shoulder  to  shoulder  with  the  American  soldiers. 
The  echoes  of  the  last  gun  had  scarcely  died  away 
when  socialist  locals  were  forming  in  Cuba  and  Porto 
Rico.  Vastly  more  significant  is  the  fact  that  of  all 
the  countries  the  revolution  has  fastened  upon,  on  not 
one  has  it  relaxed  its  grip.  On  the  contrary,  on  every 
country  its  grip  closes  tighter  year  by  year.  As  an 
active  movement  it  began  obscurely  over  a  genera 
tion  ago.  In  1867,  its  voting  strength  in  the  world 
was  30,000.  By  1871,  its  vote  had  increased  to 
1,000,000.  Not  till  1884  did  it  Pass  the  half-million 
point.  By  1889,  it  had  passed  the  million  point.  It 
had  then  gained  momentum.  In  1892  the  socialist 
vote  of  the  world  was  1,798,391 ;  in  1893,  2,585,898; 
in  1895,  3,033,718;  in  1898,  4,515,591;  in  1902, 
5,253,054;  in  1903,  6,285,374;  and  in  the  year  of 
our  Lord  1905  it  passed  the  seven-million  mark. 

Nor  has  this  flame  of  revolution  left  the  United 
States  untouched.  In  1888,  there  were  only  2,068 
socialist  votes.  In  1902,  there  were  127,713  socialist 


12  REVOLUTION 

votes.  And  in  1904,  435,040  socialist  votes  were 
cast.  What  fanned  this  flame  ?  Not  hard  times. 
The  first  four  years  of  the  twentieth  century  were 
considered  prosperous  years,  yet  in  that  time  more 
than  300,000  men  added  themselves  to  the  ranks  of 
the  revolutionists,  flinging  their  defiance  in  the  teeth 
of  bourgeois  society  and  taking  their  stand  under 
the  blood-red  banner.  In  the  state  of  the  writer, 
California,  one  man  in  twelve  is  an  avowed  and  reg 
istered  revolutionist. 

One  thing  must  be  clearly  understood.  This  is 
no  spontaneous  and  vague  uprising  of  a  large  mass 
of  discontented  and  miserable  people  —  a  blind  and 
instinctive  recoil  from  hurt.  On  the  contrary,  the 
propaganda  is  intellectual;  the  movement  is  based 
upon  economic  necessity  and  is  in  line  with  social 
evolution;  while  the  miserable  people  have  not  yet 
revolted.  The  revolutionist  is  no  starved  and  dis 
eased  slave  in  the  shambles  at  the  bottom  of  the  social 
pit,  but  is,  in  the  main,  a  hearty,  well-fed  working- 
man,  who  sees  the  shambles  waiting  for  him  and  his 
children  and  recoils  from  the  descent.  The  very 
miserable  people  are  too  helpless  to  help  themselves. 
But  they  are  being  helped,  and  the  day  is  not  far 


REVOLUTION  13 

distant  when  their  numbers  will  go  to  swell  the 
ranks  of  the  revolutionists. 

Another  thing  must  be  clearly  understood.  In 
spite  of  the  fact  that  middle-class  men  and  profes 
sional  men  are  interested  in  the  movement,  it  is 
nevertheless  a  distinctly  working-class  revolt.  The^ 
world  over,  it  is  a  working-class  revolt.  The  workers 
of  the  world,  as  a  class,  are  fighting  the  capitalists  of 
the  world,  as  a  class.  The  so-called  great  middle 
class  is  a  growing  anomaly  in  the  social  struggle. 
It  is  a  perishing  class  (wily  statisticians  to  the  con 
trary),  and  its  historic  mission  of  buffer  between  the 
capitalist-  and  working-classes  has  just  about  been 
fulfilled.  Little  remains  for  it  but  to  wail  as  it  passes 
into  oblivion,  as  it  has  already  begun  to  wail  in 
accents  Populistic  and  JefFersonian-Democratic.  The 
fight  is  on.  The  revolution  is  here  now,  and  it  is  the 
world's  workers  that  are  in  revolt. 

Naturally  the  question  arises :  Why  is  this  so  ? 
No  mere  whim  of  the  spirit  can  give  rise  to  a  world 
revolution.  Whim  does  not  conduce  to  unanimity. 
There  must  be  a  deep-seated  cause  to  make  7,000,000 
men  of  the  one  mind,  to  make  them  cast  off  allegiance 
to  the  bourgeois  gods  and  lose  faith  in  so  fine  a  thing 


I4  REVOLUTION 

as  patriotism.  There  are  many  counts  of  the  in 
dictment  which  the  revolutionists  bring  against  the 
capitalist  class,  but  for  present  use  only  one  need  be 
stated,  and  it  is  a  count  to  which  capital  has  never 
replied  and  can  never  reply. 

The  capitalist  class  has  managed  society,  and  its 
management  has  failed.  And  not  only  has  it  failed 
in  its  management,  but  it  has  failed  deplorably, 
ignobly,  horribly.  The  capitalist  class  had  an  oppor 
tunity  such  as  was  vouchsafed  no  previous  ruling 
class  in  the  history  of  the  world.  It  broke  away  from 
the  rule  of  the  old  feudal  aristocracy  and  made 
modern  society.  It  mastered  matter,  organized 
the  machinery  of  life,  and  made  possible  a  wonderful 
era  for  mankind,  wherein  no  creature  should  cry 
aloud  because  it  had  not  enough  to  eat,  and  wherein 
for  every  child  there  would  be  opportunity  for  educa 
tion,  for  intellectual  and  spiritual  uplift.  Matter 
being  mastered,  and  the  machinery  of  life  organized, 
all  this  was  possible.  Here  was  the  chance,  God- 
given,  and  the  capitalist  class  failed.  It  was  blind 
and  greedy.  It  prattled  sweet  ideals  and  dear 
moralities,  rubbed  its  eyes  not  once,  nor  ceased  one 
whit  in  its  greediness,  and  smashed  down  in  a  failure 


REVOLUTION  15 

as  tremendous  only  as  was  the  opportunity  it  had 
ignored. 

But  all  this  is  like  so  much  cobwebs  to  the  bour 
geois  mind.  As  it  was  blind  in  the  past,  it  is  blind 
now  and  cannot  see  nor  understand.  Well,  then, 
let  the  indictment  be  stated  more  definitely,  in  terms 
sharp  and  unmistakable.  In  the  first  place,  consider 
the  caveman.  He  was  a  very  simple  creature.  His 
head  slanted  back  like  an  orang-utan's  and  he  had 
but  little  more  intelligence.  He  lived  in  a  hostile 
environment,  the  prey  of  all  manner  of  fierce  life. 
He  had  no  inventions  nor  artifices.  His  natural 
efficiency  for  food-getting  was,  say,  i.  He  did  not 
even  till  the  soil.  With  his  natural  efficiency  of  I, 
he  fought  off  his  carnivorous  enemies  and  got  him 
self  food  and  shelter.  He  must  have  done  all  this, 
else  he  would  not  have  multiplied  and  spread  over 
the  earth  and  sent  his  progeny  down,  generation  by 
generation,  to  become  even  you  and  me. 

The  caveman,  with  his  natural  efficiency  of  I,  got 
enough  to  eat  most  of  the  time,  and  no  caveman 
went  hungry  all  the  time.  Also,  he  lived  a  healthy, 
open-air  life,  loafed  and  rested  himself,  and  found 
plenty  of  time  in  which  to  exercise  his  imagination 


16  REVOLUTION 

and  invent  gods.  That  is  to  say,  he  did  not  have 
to  work  all  his  waking  moments  in  order  to  get  enough 
to  eat.  The  child  of  the  caveman  (and  this  is  true 
of  the  children  of  all  savage  peoples)  had  a  child 
hood,  and  by  that  is  meant  a  happy  childhood  of 
play  and  development. 

And  now,  how  fares  modern  man  ?  Consider  the 
United  States,  the  most  prosperous  and  most  en 
lightened  country  of  the  world.  In  the  United  States 
there  are  10,000,000  people  living  in  poverty.  By 
poverty  is  meant  that  condition  in  life  in  which, 
through  lack  of  food  and  adequate  shelter,  the  mere 
standard  of  working  efficiency  cannot  be  maintained. 
In  the  United  States  there  are  10,000,000  people 
who  have  not  enough  to  eat.  In  the  United  States,  be 
cause  they  have  not  enough  to  eat,  there  are  10,000,- 
ooo  people  who  cannot  keep  the  ordinary  measure  of 
strength  in  their  bodies.  This  means  that  these 
10,000,000  people  are  perishing,  are  dying,  body 
and  soul,  slowly,  because  they  have  not  enough  to 
eat.  All  over  this  broad,  prosperous,  enlightened 
land,  are  men,  women,  and  children  who  are  living 
miserably.  In  all  the  great  cities,  where  they  are 
segregated  in  slum  ghettos  by  hundreds  of  thousands 


REVOLUTION  17 

and  by  millions,  their  misery  becomes  beastliness. 
No  caveman  ever  starved  as  chronically  as  they 
starve,  ever  slept  as  vilely  as  they  sleep,  ever  festered 
with  rottenness  and  disease  as  they  fester,  nor  ever 
toiled  as  hard  and  for  as  long  hours  as  they  toil. 

In  Chicago  there  is  a  woman  who  toiled  sixty  hours 
per  week.  She  was  a  garment  worker.  She  sewed 
buttons  on  clothes.  Among  the  Italian  garment 
workers  of  Chicago,  the  average  weekly  wage  of  the 
dressmakers  is  90  cents,  but  they  work  every  week 
in  the  year.  The  average  weekly  wage  of  the  pants 
finishers  in  $1.31,  and  the  average  number  of  weeks 
employed  in  the  year  is  27.85.  The  average  yearly 
earnings  of  the  dressmakers  is  $37.00;  of  the  pants 
finishers,  $42.41.  Such  wages  means  no  childhood 
for  the  children,  beastliness  of  living,  and  starvation 
for  all. 

Unlike  the  caveman,  modern  man  cannot  get 
food  and  shelter  whenever  he  feels  like  working  for 
it.  Modern  man  has  first  to  find  the  work,  and  in 
this  he  is  often  unsuccessful.  Then  misery  becomes 
acute.  This  acute  misery  is  chronicled  daily  in  the 
newspapers.  Let  several  of  the  countless  instances 

be  cited. 
c 


1 8  REVOLUTION 

In  New  York  City  lived  a  woman,  Mary  Mead. 
She  had  three  children:  Mary,  one  year  old;  Jo 
hanna,  two  years  old;  Alice,  four  years  old.  Her 
husband  could  find  no  work.  They  starved.  They 
were  evicted  from  their  shelter  at  160  Steuben  Street. 
Mary  Mead  strangled  her  baby,  Mary,  one  year  old; 
strangled  Alice,  four  years  old;  failed  to  strangle 
Johanna,  two  years  old,  and  then  herself  took  poison. 
Said  the  father  to  the  police:  "Constant  poverty  had 
driven  my  wife  insane.  We  lived  at  No.  160  Steu 
ben  Street  until  a  week  ago,  when  we  were  dispos 
sessed.  I  could  get  no  work.  I  could  not  even  make 
enough  to  put  food  into  our  mouths.  The  babies 
grew  ill  and  weak.  My  wife  cried  nearly  all  the 


time." 


"So  overwhelmed  is  the  Department  of  Charities 
with  tens  of  thousands  of  applications  from  men  out 
of  work  that  it  finds  itself  unable  to  cope  with  the 
situation." — New  York  Commercial,  January  II, 
1905. 

In  a  daily  paper,  because  he  cannot  get  work  in 
order  to  get  something  to  eat,  modern  man  advertises 
as  follows:  — 

"Young  man,  good  education,  unable  to  obtain 


REVOLUTION  19 

employment,  will  sell  to  physician  and  bacteriologist 
for  experimental  purposes  all  right  and  title  to  his 
body.  Address  for  price,  box  3466,  Examiner." 

"  Frank  A.  Mallin  went  to  the  central  police  station 
Wednesday  night  and  asked  to  be  locked  up  on  a 
charge  of  vagrancy.  He  said  he  had  been  conduct 
ing  an  unsuccessful  search  for  work  for  so  long  that 
he  was  sure  he  must  be  a  vagrant.  In  any  event,  he 
was  so  hungry  he  must  be  fed.  Police  Judge  Gra 
ham  sentenced  him  to  ninety  days'  imprisonment." 
—  San  Francisco  Examiner. 

In  a  room  at  the  Soto  House,  32  Fourth  Street,  San 
Francisco,  was  found  the  body  of  W.  G.  Robbins. 
He  had  turned  on  the  gas.  Also  was  found  his 
diary,  from  which  the  following  extracts  are  made :  — 

"March  3.  —  No  chance  of  getting  anything  here. 
What  will  I  do? 

"  March  7.  —  Cannot  find  anything  yet. 

"March  8. — Am  living  on  doughnuts  at  five 
cents  a  day. 

"March  9.  —  My  last  quarter  gone  for  room  rent. 

"March  10.  —  God  help  me.  Have  only  five 
cents  left.  Can  get  nothing  to  do.  What  next  ? 
Starvation  or —  ?  I  have  spent  my  last  nickel 


20  REVOLUTION 

tonight.  What  shall  I  do  ?  Shall  it  be  steal,  beg,  or 
die  ?  I  have  never  stolen,  begged,  or  starved  in  all 
my  fifty  years  of  life,  but  now  I  am  on  the  brink  — 
death  seems  the  only  refuge. 

"March  n.  —  Sick  all  day  —  burning  fever  this 
afternoon.  Had  nothing  to  eat  to-day  or  since  yes 
terday  noon.  My  head,  my  head.  Good-by,  all." 

How  fares  the  child  of  modern  man  in  this  most 
prosperous  of  lands  ?  In  the  city  of  New  York 
50,000  children  go  hungry  to  school  every  morning. 
From  the  same  city  on  January  12,  a  press  despatch 
was  sent  out  over  the  country  of  a  case  reported  by 
Dr.  A.  E.  Daniel,  of  the  New  York  Infirmary  for 
Women  and  Children.  The  case  was  that  of  a  babe, 
eighteen  months  old,  who  earned  by  its  labor  fifty 
cents  per  week  in  a  tenement  sweat-shop. 

"On  a  pile  of  rags  in  a  room  bare  of  furniture  and 
freezing  cold,  Mrs.  Mary  Gallin,  dead  from  starva 
tion,  with  an  emaciated  baby  four  months  old  crying 
at  her  breast,  was  found  this  morning  at  513  Myrtle 
Avenue,  Brooklyn,  by  Policeman  McConnon  of  the 
Flushing  Avenue  Station.  Huddled  together  for 
warmth  in  another  part  of  the  room  were  the  father, 
James  Gallin,  and  three  children  ranging  from  two 


REVOLUTION  21 

to  eight  years  of  age.  The  children  gazed  at  the 
policeman  much  as  ravenous  animals  might  have 
done.  They  were  famished,  and  there  was  not  a 
vestige  of  food  in  their  comfortless  home."  —  New 
York  Journal,  January  2,  1902. 

In  the  United  States  80,000  children  are  toiling 
out  their  lives  in  the  textile  mills  alone.  In  the  South 
they  work  twelve-hour  shifts.  They  never  see  the 
day.  Those  on  the  night  shift  are  asleep  when  the 
sun  pours  its  life  and  warmth  over  the  world,  while 
those  on  the  day  shift  are  at  the  machines  before 
dawn  and  return  to  their  miserable  dens,  called 
"homes,"  after  dark.  Many  receive  no  more  than 
ten  cents  a  day.  There  are  babies  who  work  for 
five  and  six  cents  a  day.  Those  who  work  on  the 
night  shift  are  often  kept  awake  by  having  cold 
water  dashed  in  their  faces.  There  are  children  six 
years  of  age  who  have  already  to  their  credit  eleven 
months'  work  on  the  night  shift.  When  they  become 
sick,  and  are  unable  to  rise  from  their  beds  to  go  to 
work,  there  are  men  employed  to  go  on  horseback 
from  house  to  house,  and  cajole  and  bully  them  into 
arising  and  going  to  work.  Ten  per  cent  of  them 
contract  active  consumption.  All  are  puny  wrecks, 


22  REVOLUTION 

distorted,  stunted,  mind  and  body.  Elbert  Hubbard 
says  of  the  child-laborers  of  the  Southern  cotton- 
mills  :  — 

"I  thought  to  lift  one  of  the  little  toilers  to  ascertain 
his  weight.  Straightaway  through  his  thirty-five 
pounds  of  skin  and  bones  there  ran  a  tremor  of  fear, 
and  he  struggled  forward  to  tie  a  broken  thread.  I 
attracted  his  attention  by  a  touch,  and  offered  him  a 
silver  dime.  He  looked  at  me  dumbly  from  a  face 
that  might  have  belonged  to  a  man  of  sixty,  so  fur 
rowed,  tightly  drawn,  and  full  of  pain  it  was.  He  did 
not  reach  for  the  money  —  he  did  not  know  what  it 
was.  There  were  dozens  of  such  children  in  this 
particular  mill.  A  physician  who  was  with  me  said 
that  they  would  all  be  dead  probably  in  two  years, 
and  their  places  filled  by  others  —  there  were  plenty 
more.  Pneumonia  carries  off  most  of  them.  Their 
systems  are  ripe  for  disease,  and  when  it  comes  there 
is  no  rebound  —  no  response.  Medicine  simply 
does  not  act  —  nature  is  whipped,  beaten,  dis 
couraged,  and  the  child  sinks  into  a  stupor  and  dies." 

So  fares  modern  man  and  the  child  of  modern 
man  in  the  United  States,  most  prosperous  and  en 
lightened  of  all  countries  on  earth.  It  must  be 


REVOLUTION  23 

remembered  that  the  instances  given  are  instances 
only,  but  that  they  can  be  multiplied  myriads  of 
times.  It  must  also  be  remembered  that  what  is 
true  of  the  United  States  is  true  of  all  the  civilized 
world.  Such  misery  was  not  true  of  the  caveman. 
Then  what  has  happened  ?  Has  the  hostile  environ 
ment  of  the  caveman  grown  more  hostile  for  his 
descendants  ?  Has  the  caveman's  natural  effi 
ciency  of  I  for  food-getting  and  shelter-getting 
diminished  in  modern  man  to  one-half  or  one- 
quarter  ? 

On  the  contrary,  the  hostile  environment  of  the 
caveman  has  been  destroyed.  For  modern  man  it 
no  longer  exists.  All  carnivorous  enemies,  the  daily 
menace  of  the  younger  world,  have  been  killed  off. 
Many  of  the  species  of  prey  have  become  extinct. 
Here  and  there,  in  secluded  portions  of  the  world, 
still  linger  a  few  of  man's  fiercer  enemies.  But  they 
are  far  from  being  a  menace  to  mankind.  Modern 
man,  when  he  wants  recreation  and  change,  goes 
to  the  secluded  portions  of  the  world  for  a  hunt. 
Also,  in  idle  moments,  he  wails  regretfully  at  the  pass 
ing  of  the  "  big  game,"  which  he  knows  in  the  not 
distant  future  will  disappear  from  the  earth. 


24  REVOLUTION 

Nor  since  the  day  of  the  caveman  has  man's  effi 
ciency  for  food-getting  and  shelter-getting  diminished. 
It  has  increased  a  thousand  fold.  Since  the  day 
of  the  caveman,  matter  has  been  mastered.  The 
secrets  of  matter  have  been  discovered.  Its  laws 
have  been  formulated.  Wonderful  artifices  have 
been  made,  and  marvellous  inventions,  all  tending 
to  increase  tremendously  man's  natural  efficiency 
of  i  in  every  food-getting,  shelter-getting  exertion,  in 
farming,  mining,  manufacturing,  transportation,  and 
communication. 

From  the  caveman  to  the  hand-workers  of  three 
generations  ago,  the  increase  in  efficiency  for  food- 
and  shelter-getting  has  been  very  great.  But  in  this 
day,  by  machinery,  the  efficiency  of  the  hand-worker 
of  three  generations  ago  has  in  turn  been  increased 
many  times.  Formerly  it  required  200  hours  of 
human  labor  to  place  100  tons  of  ore  on  a  railroad 
car.  To-day,  aided  by  machinery,  but  two  hours 
of  human  labor  is  required  to  do  the  same  task. 
The  United  States  Bureau  of  Labor  is  responsible 
for  the  following  table,  showing  the  comparatively 
recent  increase  in  man's  food-  and  shelter-getting 
efficiency : 


REVOLUTION  25 

Machine   Hand 
Hours.     Hours. 

Barley  (100  bushels) 9  211 

Corn  (50  bushels  shelled,  stalks,  husks,  and  blades 

cut  into  fodder) 34  228 

Oats  (160  bushels) 28  265 

Wheat  (50  bushels) 7  160 

Loading  ore  (loading  100  tons  iron  ore  on  cars)      .  2  200 
Unloading  coal   (transferring  200  tons  from  canal- 
boats  to  bins  400  feet  distant) 20  240 

Pitchforks  (50  pitchforks,  12-inch  tines)     .     .     .     .  12  200 

Plough  (one  landside  plough,  oak  beams  and  handles)  3  118 

According  to  the  same  authority,  under  the  best 
conditions  for  organization  in  farming,  labor  can 
produce  20  bushels  of  wheat  for  66  cents,  or  I  bushel 
for  3^  cents.  This  was  done  on  a  bonanza  farm  of 
10,000  acres  in  California,  and  was  the  average  cost 
of  the  whole  product  of  the  farm.  Mr.  Carroll  D. 
Wright  says  that  to-day  4,500,000  men,  aided  by 
machinery,  turn  out  a  product  that  would  require 
the  labor  of  40,000,000  men  if  produced  by  hand. 
Professor  Herzog,  of  Austria,  says  that  5,000,000 
people  with  the  machinery  of  to-day,  employed  at 
socially  useful  labor,  would  be  able  to  supply  a  popu 
lation  of  20,000,000  people  with  all  the  necessaries 
and  small  luxuries  of  life  by  working  ij  hours  per  day. 


26  REVOLUTION 

This  being  so,  matter  being  mastered,  man's 
efficiency  for  food-  and  shelter-getting  being  in 
creased  a  thousand  fold  over  the  efficiency  of  the 
caveman,  then  why  is  it  that  millions  of  modern 
men  live  more  miserably  than  lived  the  caveman  ? 
This  is  the  question  the  revolutionist  asks,  and  he 
asks  it  of  the  managing  class,  the  capitalist  class. 
The  capitalist  class  does  not  answer  it.  The  capi 
talist  class  cannot  answer  it. 

If  modern  man's  food-  and  shelter-getting  effi 
ciency  is  a  thousand  fold  greater  than  that  of  the  cave 
man,  why,  then,  are  there  10,000,000  people  in  the 
United  States  to-day  who  are  not  properly  sheltered 
and  properly  fed  ?  If  the  child  of  the  caveman  did 
not  have  to  work,  why,  then,  to-day,  in  the  United 
States,  are  80,000  children  working  out  their  lives 
in  the  textile  factories  alone  ?  If  the  child  of  the 
caveman  did  not  have  to  work,  why,  then,  to-day,  in 
the  United  States,  are  there  1,752,187  child-laborers? 

It  is  a  true  count  in  the  indictment.  The  capitalist 
class  has  mismanaged,  is  to-day  mismanaging.  In 
New  York  City  50,000  children  go  hungry  to  school, 
and  in  New  York  City  there  are  1320  millionnaires. 
The  point,  however,  is  not  that  the  mass  of  man- 


REVOLUTION  27 

kind  is  miserable  because  of  the  wealth  the  capitalist 
class  has  taken  to  itself.  Far  from  it.  The  point 
really  is  that  the  mass  of  mankind  is  miserable,  not 
for  want  of  the  wealth  taken  by  the  capitalist  class, 
but  for  want  of  the  wealth  that  was  never  created. 
This  wealth  was  never  created  because  the  capi 
talist  class  managed  too  wastefully  and  irrationally. 
The  capitalist  class,  blind  and  greedy,  grasping  madly, 
has  not  only  not  made  the  best  of  its  management, 
but  made  the  worst  of  it.  It  is  a  management  pro 
digiously  wasteful.  This  point  cannot  be  empha 
sized  too  strongly. 

In  face  of  the  facts  that  modern  man  lives  more 
wretchedly  than  the  caveman,  and  that  modern 
man's  food-  and  shelter-getting  efficiency  is  a  thou 
sand  fold  greater  than  the  caveman's,  no  other  so 
lution  is  possible  than  that  the  management  is 
prodigiously  wasteful. 

With  the  natural  resources  of  the  world,  the  ma 
chinery  already  invented,  a  rational  organization  cf 
production  and  distribution,  and  an  equally  rational 
elimination  of  waste,  the  able-bodied  workers  would 
not  have  to  labor  more  than  two  or  three  hours  per 
day  to  feed  everybody,  clothe  everybody,  house  every- 


28  REVOLUTION 

body,  educate  everybody,  and  give  a  fair  measure 
of  little  luxuries  to  everybody.  There  would  be  no 
more  material  want  and  wretchedness,  no  more 
children  toiling  out  their  lives,  no  more  men  and 
women  and  babes  living  like  beasts  and  dying  like 
beasts.  Not  only  would  matter  be  mastered,  but 
the  machine  would  be  mastered.  In  such  a  day 
incentive  would  be  finer  and  nobler  than  the  incentive 
of  to-day,  which  is  the  incentive  of  the  stomach. 
No  man,  woman,  or  child  would  be  impelled  to  action 
by  an  empty  stomach.  On  the  contrary,  they  would 
be  impelled  to  action  as  a  child  in  a  spelling  match 
is  impelled  to  action,  as  boys  and  girls  at  games,  as 
scientists  formulating  law,  as  inventors  applying 
law,  as  artists  and  sculptors  painting  canvases  and 
shaping  clay,  as  poets  and  statesmen  serving  human 
ity  by  singing  and  by  statecraft.  The  spiritual, 
intellectual,  and  artistic  uplift  consequent  upon  such 
a  condition  of  society  would  be  tremendous.  All  the 
human  world  would  surge  upward  in  a  mighty  wave. 
This  was  the  opportunity  vouchsafed  the  capitalist 
class.  Less  blindness  on  its  part,  less  greediness, 
and  a  rational  management,  were  all  that  was  neces 
sary.  A  wonderful  era  was  possible  for  the  human 


REVOLUTION  29 

race.  But  the  capitalist  class  failed.  It  made  a 
shambles  of  civilization.  Nor  can  the  capitalist  class 
plead  not  guilty.  It  knew  of  the  opportunity.  Its 
wise  men  told  it  of  the  opportunity,  its  scholars  and 
its  scientists  told  it  of  the  opportunity.  All  that  they 
said  is  there  to-day  in  the  books,  just  so  much  dam 
ning  evidence  against  it.  It  would  not  listen.  It  was 
too  greedy.  It  rose  up  (as  it  rises  up  to-day),  shame 
lessly,  in  our  legislative  halls,  and  declared  that  profits 
were  impossible  without  the  toil  of  children  and  babes. 
It  lulled  its  conscience  to  sleep  with  prattle  of  sweet 
ideals  and  dear  moralities,  and  allowed  the  suffering 
and  misery  of  mankind  to  continue  and  to  increase. 
In  short,  the  capitalist  class  failed  to  take  advantage 
of  the  opportunity. 

But  the  opportunity  is  still  here.  The  capitalist 
class  has  been  tried  and  found  wanting.  Remains 
the  working-class  to  see  what  it  can  do  with  the 
opportunity.  "But  the  working-class  is  incapable," 
says  the  capitalist  class.  "What  do  you  know  about 
it?"  the  working-class  replies.  "Because  you  have 
failed  is  no  reason  that  we  shall  fail.  Furthermore, 
we  are  going  to  have  a  try  at  it,  anyway.  Seven  mil 
lions  of  us  say  so.  And  what  have  you  to  say  to  that  ? " 


30  REVOLUTION 

And  what  can  the  capitalist  class  say  ?  Grant  the 
incapacity  of  the  working-class.  Grant  that  the 
indictment  and  the  argument  of  the  revolutionists 
are  all  wrong.  The  7,000,000  revolutionists  remain. 
Their  existence  is  a  fact.  Their  belief  in  their  capac 
ity,  and  in  their  indictment  and  their  argument, 
is  a  fact.  Their  constant  growth  is  a  fact.  Their 
intention  to  destroy  present-day  society  is  a  fact,  as 
is  also  their  intention  to  take  possession  of  the  world 
with  all  its  wealth  and  machinery  and  governments. 
Moreover,  it  is  a  fact  that  the  working-class  is  vastly 
larger  than  the  capitalist  class. 

The  revolution  is  a  revolution  of  the  working-class. 
How  can  the  capitalist  class,  in  the  minority,  stem 
this  tide  of  revolution  ?  What  has  it  to  offer  ?  What 
does  it  offer  ?  Employers'  associations,  injunctions, 
civil  suits  for  plundering  of  the  treasuries  of  the  labor- 
unions,  clamor  and  combination  for  the  open  shop, 
bitter  and  shameless  opposition  to  the  eight-hour  day, 
strong  efforts  to  defeat  all  reform  child-labor  bills, 
graft  in  every  municipal  council,  strong  lobbies  and 
bribery  in  every  legislature  for  the  purchase  of  capital 
ist  legislation,  bayonets,  machine-guns,  policemen's 
clubs,  professional  strike-breakers,  and  armed  Pink- 


REVOLUTION  31 

ertons  —  these  are  the  things  the  capitalist  class  is 
dumping  in  front  of  the  tide  of  revolution,  as  though, 
forsooth,  to  hold  it  back. 

The  capitalist  class  is  as  blind  to-day  to  the  menace 
of  the  revolution  as  it  was  blind  in  the  past  to  its 
own  God-given  opportunity.  It  cannot  see  how  pre 
carious  is  its  position,  cannot  comprehend  the  power 
and  the  portent  of  the  revolution.  It  goes  on  its 
placid  way,  prattling  sweet  ideals  and  dear  moralities, 
and  scrambling  sordidly  for  material  benefits. 

No  overthrown  ruler  or  class  in  the  past  ever  con 
sidered  the  revolution  that  overthrew  it,  and  so  with 
the  capitalist  class  of  to-day.  Instead  of  compromis 
ing,  instead  of  lengthening  its  lease  of  life  by  con 
ciliation  and  by  removal  of  some  of  the  harsher 
oppressions  of  the  working-class,  it  antagonizes  the 
working-class,  drives  the  working-class  into  revolu 
tion.  Every  broken  strike  in  recent  years,  every 
legally  plundered  trades-union  treasury,  every  closed 
shop  made  into  an  open  shop,  has  driven  the  members 
of  the  working-class  directly  hurt  over  to  socialism  by 
hundreds  and  thousands.  Show  a  workingman  that 
his  union  fails,  and  he  becomes  a  revolutionist. 
Break  a  strike  with  an  injunction  or  bankrupt  a 


32  REVOLUTION 

union  with  a  civil  suit,  and  the  workingmen  hurt 
thereby  listen  to  the  siren  song  of  the  socialist  and  are 
lost  forever  to  the  political  capitalist  parties. 

Antagonism  never  lulled  revolution,  and  antago 
nism  is  about  all  the  capitalist  class  offers.  It  is  true, 
it  offers  some  few  antiquated  notions  which  were 
very  efficacious  in  the  past,  but  which  are  no  longer 
efficacious.  Fourth-of-July  liberty  in  terms  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  and  of  the  French 
Encyclopedists  is  scarcely  apposite  to-day.  It  does 
not  appeal  to  the  workingman  who  has  had  his 
head  broken  by  a  policeman's  club,  his  union  treas 
ury  bankrupted  by  a  court  decision,  or  his  job  taken 
away  from  him  by  a  labor-saving  invention.  Nor  does 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  appear  so  glorious 
and  constitutional  to  the  workingman  who  has  expe 
rienced  a  bull  pen  or  been  unconstitutionally  deported 
from  Colorado.  Nor  are  this  particular  workingman's 
hurt  feelings  soothed  by  reading  in  the  newspapers  that 
both  the  bull  pen  and  the  deportation  were  preemi 
nently  just,  legal,  and  constitutional.  "To  hell,  then, 
with  the  Constitution  ! "  says  he,  and  another  revolu 
tionist  has  been  made  — by  the  capitalist  class. 

In  short,  so  blind  is  the  capitalist  class  that  it 


REVOLUTION  33 

does  nothing  to  lengthen  its  lease  of  life,  while  it 
does  everything  to  shorten  it.  The  capitalist  class 
offers  nothing  that  is  clean,  noble,  and  alive.  The 
revolutionists  offer  everything  that  is  clean,  noble, 
and  alive.  They  offer  service,  unselfishness,  sacri 
fice,  martyrdom  —  the  things  that  sting  awake  the 
imagination  of  the  people,  touching  their  hearts  with 
the  fervor  that  arises  out  of  the  impulse  toward  good 
and  which  is  essentially  religious  in  its  nature. 

But  the  revolutionists  blow  hot  and  blow  cold. 
They  offer  facts  and  statistics,  economics  and  scien 
tific  arguments.  If  the  workingman  be  merely  selfish, 
the  revolutionists  show  him,  mathematically  demon 
strate  to  him,  that  his  condition  will  be  bettered  by  the 
revolution.  If  the  workingman  be  the  higher  type, 
moved  by  impulses  toward  right  conduct,  if  he  have 
soul  and  spirit,  the  revolutionists  offer  him  the  things 
of  the  soul  and  the  spirit,  the  tremendous  things  that 
cannot  be  measured  by  dollars  and  cents,  nor  be  held 
down  by  dollars  and  cents.  The  revolutionist  cries 
out  upon  wrong  and  injustice,  and  preaches  righteous 
ness.  And,  most  potent  of  all,  he  sings  the  eternal 
song  of  human  freedom  —  a  song  of  all  lands  and 
all  tongues  and  all  time. 


34  REVOLUTION 

Few  members  of  the  capitalist  class  see  the  revo 
lution.  Most  of  them  are  too  ignorant,  and  many 
are  too  afraid  to  see  it.  It  is  the  same  old  story  of 
every  perishing  ruling  class  in  the  world's  history. 
Fat  with  power  and  possession,  drunken  with  success, 
and  made  soft  by  surfeit  and  by  cessation  of  struggle, 
they  are  like  the  drones  clustered  about  the  honey 
vats  when  the  worker-bees  spring  upon  them  to  end 
their  rotund  existence. 

President  Roosevelt  vaguely  sees  the  revolution,  is 
frightened  by  it,  and  recoils  from  seeing  it.  As  he 
says:  "Above  all,  we  need  to  remember  that  any 
kind  of  class  animosity  in  the  political  world  is,  if 
possible,  even  more  wicked,  even  more  destructive  to 
national  welfare,  than  sectional,  race,  or  religious 
animosity." 

Class  animosity  in  the  political  world,  President 
Roosevelt  maintains,  is  wicked.  But  class  animosity 
in  the  political  world  is  the  preachment  of  the  revo 
lutionists.  "Let  the  class  wars  in  the  industrial 
world  continue,"  they  say,  "but  extend  the  class  war 
to  the  political  world."  As  their  leader,  Eugene  V. 
Debs,  says:  "So  far  as  this  struggle  is  concerned, 
there  is  no  good  capitalist  and  no  bad  workingman. 


REVOLUTION  35 

Every  capitalist  is  your  enemy  and  every  working- 
man  is  your  friend." 

Here  is  class  animosity  in  the  political  world  with 
a  vengeance.  And  here  is  revolution.  In  1888 
there  were  only  2000  revolutionists  of  this  type  in  the 
United  States;  in  1900  there  were  127,000  revo 
lutionists;  in  1904,  435,000  revolutionists.  Wicked 
ness  of  the  President  Roosevelt  definition  evidently 
flourishes  and  increases  in  the  United  States.  Quite 
so,  for  it  is  the  revolution  that  flourishes  and  increases. 

Here  and  there  a  member  of  the  capitalist  class 
catches  a  clear  glimpse  of  the  revolution,  and  raises 
a  warning  cry.  But  his  class  does  not  heed.  Presi 
dent  Eliot  of  Harvard  raised  such  a  cry:  "I  am 
forced  to  believe  there  is  a  present  danger  of  social 
ism  never  before  so  imminent  in  America  in  so  dan 
gerous  a  form,  because  never  before  imminent  in 
so  well  organized  a  form.  The  danger  lies  in  the 
obtaining  control  of  the  trades-unions  by  the  social 
ists."  And  the  capitalist  employers,  instead  of  giv 
ing  heed  to  the  warnings,  are  perfecting  their  strike 
breaking  organization  and  combining  more  strongly 
than  ever  for  a  general  assault  upon  that  dearest  of 
all  things  to  the  trades-unions,  —  the  closed  shop. 


36  REVOLUTION 

In  so  far  as  this  assault  succeeds,  by  just  that  much 
will  the  capitalist  class  shorten  its  lease  of  life.  It  is 
the  old,  old  story,  over  again  and  over  again.  The 
drunken  drones  still  cluster  greedily  about  the  honey 
vats. 

Possibly  one  of  the  most  amusing  spectacles  of 
to-day  is  the  attitude  of  the  American  press  toward 
the  revolution.  It  is  also  a  pathetic  spectacle.  It 
compels  the  onlooker  to  be  aware  of  a  distinct  loss 
of  pride  in  his  species.  Dogmatic  utterance  from 
the  mouth  of  ignorance  may  make  gods  laugh,  but 
it  should  make  men  weep.  And  the  American  editors 
(in  the  general  instance)  are  so  impressive  about  it ! 
The  old  "divide-up,"  " men-are-wctf-born-free-and- 
equal"  propositions  are  enunciated  gravely  and 
sagely,  as  things  white-hot  and  new  from  the  forge 
of  human  wisdom.  Their  feeble  vaporings  show  no 
more  than  a  schoolboy's  comprehension  of  the  nature 
of  the  revolution.  Parasites  themselves  on  the  capi 
talist  class,  serving  the  capitalist  class  by  moulding 
public  opinion,  they,  too,  cluster  drunkenly  about  the 
honey  vats. 

Of  course,  this  is  true  only  of  the  large  majority 
of  American  editors.  To  say  that  it  is  true  of  all  of 


REVOLUTION  37 

them  would  be  to  cast  too  great  obloquy  upon  the 
human  race.  Also,  it  would  be  untrue,  for  here  and 
there  an  occasional  editor  does  see  clearly  —  and  in 
his  case,  ruled  by  stomach-incentive,  is  usually  afraid 
to  say  what  he  thinks  about  it.  So  far  as  the  science 
and  the  sociology  of  the  revolution  are  concerned, 
the  average  editor  is  a  generation  or  so  behind  the 
facts.  He  is  intellectually  slothful,  accepts  no  facts 
until  they  are  accepted  by  the  majority,  and  prides 
himself  upon  his  conservatism.  He  is  an  instinctive 
optimist,  prone  to  believe  that  what  ought  to  be,  is. 
The  revolutionist  gave  this  up  long  ago,  and  believes 
not  that  what  ought  to  be,  is,  but  what  is,  is,  and 
that  it  may  not  be  what  it  ought  to  be  at  all. 

Now  and  then,  rubbing  his  eyes  vigorously,  an 
editor  catches  a  sudden  glimpse  of  the  revolution  and 
breaks  out  in  naive  volubility,  as,  for  instance,  the 
one  who  wrote  the  following  in  the  Chicago  Chron 
icle:  "American  socialists  are  revolutionists.  They 
know  that  they  are  revolutionists.  It  is  high  time 
that  other  people  should  appreciate  the  fact."  A 
white-hot,  brand-new  discovery,  and  he  proceeded 
to  shout  it  out  from  the  housetops  that  we,  forsooth, 
were  revolutionists.  Why,  it  is  just  what  we  have 


38  REVOLUTION 

been  doing  all  these  years  —  shouting  it  out  from 
the  housetops  that  we  are  revolutionists,  and  stop 
us  who  can. 

The  time  should  be  past  for  the  mental  attitude: 
"Revolution  is  atrocious.  Sir,  there  is  no  revolution." 
Likewise  should  the  time  be  past  for  that  other 
familiar  attitude:  "Socialism  is  slavery.  Sir,  it  will 
never  be."  It  is  no  longer  a  question  of  dialectics, 
theories,  and  dreams.  There  is  no  question  about  it. 
The  revolution  is  a  fact.  It  is  here  now.  Seven  mill 
ion  revolutionists,  organized,  working  day  and  night, 
are  preaching  the  revolution  —  that  passionate  gospel, 
the  Brotherhood  of  Man.  Not  only  is  it  a  cold 
blooded  economic  propaganda,  but  it  is  in  essence 
a  religious  propaganda  with  a  fervor  in  it  of  Paul 
and  Christ.  The  capitalist  class  has  been  indicted. 
It  has  failed  in  its  management  and  its  management 
is  to  be  taken  away  from  it.  Seven  million  men  of 
the  working-class  say  that  they  are  going  to  get  the 
rest  of  the  working-class  to  join  with  them  and  take 
the  management  away.  The  revolution  is  here, 
now.  Stop  it  who  can. 

SACRAMENTO  RIVER, 
March,  1905. 


THE   SOMNAMBULISTS 


THE  SOMNAMBULISTS 

"  'Tis  only  fools  speak  evil  of  the  clay  — 
The  very  stars  are  made  of  clay  like  mine." 

THE  mightiest  and  absurdest  sleep-walker  on 
the  planet !  Chained  in  the  circle  of  his 
own  imaginings,  man  is  only  too  keen  to 
forget  his  origin  and  to  shame  that  flesh  of  his  that 
bleeds  like  all  flesh  and  that  is  good  to  eat.  Civili 
zation  (which  is  part  of  the  circle  of  his  imaginings) 
has  spread  a  veneer  over  the  surface  of  the  soft- 
shelled  animal  known  as  man.  It  is  a  very  thin 
veneer;  but  so  wonderfully  is  man  constituted  that 
he  squirms  on  his  bit  of  achievement  and  believes  he 
is  garbed  in  armor-plate. 

Yet  man  to-day  is  the  same  man  that  drank 
from  his  enemy's  skull  in  the  dark  German  forests, 
that  sacked  cities,  and  stole  his  women  from  neigh 
boring  clans  like  any  howling  aborigine.  The  flesh- 
and-blood  body  of  man  has  not  changed  in  the  last 

41 


42  THE   SOMNAMBULISTS 

several  thousand  years.  Nor  has  his  mind  changed. 
There  is  no  faculty  of  the  mind  of  man  to-day  that 
did  not  exist  in  the  minds  of  the  men  of  long  ago. 
Man  has  to-day  no  concept  that  is  too  wide  and 
deep  and  abstract  for  the  mind  of  Plato  or  Aristotle 
to  grasp.  Give  to  Plato  or  Aristotle  the  same  fund 
of  knowledge  that  man  to-day  has  access  to,  and 
Plato  and  Aristotle  would  reason  as  profoundly  as 
the  man  of  to-day  and  would  achieve  very  similar 
conclusions. 

It  is  the  same  old  animal  man,  smeared  over,  it 
is  true,  with  a  veneer,  thin  and  magical,  that  makes 
him  dream  drunken  dreams  of  self-exaltation  and 
to  sneer  at  the  flesh  and  the  blood  of  him  beneath 
the  smear.  The  raw  animal  crouching  within  him 
is  like  the^  earthquake  monster  pent  in  the  crust  of 
the  earth.  As  he  persuades  himself  against  the 
latter  till  it  arouses  and  shakes  down  a  city,  so  does 
he  persuade  himself  against  the  former  until  it 
shakes  him  out  of  his  dreaming  and  he  stands  un 
disguised,  a  brute  like  any  other  brute. 

Starve  him,  let  him  miss  six  meals,  and  see  gape 
through  the  veneer  the  hungry  maw  of  the  animal 
beneath.  Get  between  him  and  the  female  of  his 


THE  SOMNAMBULISTS  43 

kind  upon  whom  his  mating  instinct  is  bent,  and 
see  his  eyes  blaze  like  an  angry  cat's,  hear  in  his 
throat  the  scream  of  wild  stallions,  and  watch  his 
fists  clench  like  an  orang-outan's.  Maybe  he  will 
even  beat  his  chest.  Touch  his  silly  vanity,  which 
he  exalts  into  high-sounding  pride  —  call  him  a  liar, 
and  behold  the  red  animal  in  him  that  makes  a 
hand  clutching  that  is  quick  like  the  tensing  of  a 
tiger's  claw,  or  an  eagle's  talon,  incarnate  with  desire 
to  rip  and  tear. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  call  him  a  liar  to  touch  his 
vanity.  Tell  a  plains  Indian  that  he  has  failed  to 
steal  horses  from  the  neighboring  tribe,  or  tell  a 
man  living  in  bourgeois  society  that  he  has  failed 
to  pay  his  bills  at  the  neighboring  grocer's,  and  the 
results  are  the  same.  Each,  plains  Indian  and 
bourgeois,  is  smeared  with  a  slightly  different  veneer, 
that  is  all.  It  requires  a  slightly  different  stick  to- 
scrape  it  off.  The  raw  animals  beneath  are  identical. 

But  intrude  not  violently  upon  man,  leave  him 
alone  in  his  somnambulism,  and  he  kicks  out  from 
under  his  feet  the  ladder  of  life  up  which  he  has 
climbed,  constitutes  himself  the  center  of  the  uni 
verse,  dreams  sordidly  about  his  own  particular 


44  THE  SOMNAMBULISTS 

god,  and  maunders  metaphysically  about  his  own 
blessed  immortality. 

True,  he  lives  in  a  real  world,  breathes  real  air, 
eats  real  food,  and  sleeps  under  real  blankets,  in 
order  to  keep  real  cold  away.  And  there's  the  rub. 
He  has  to  effect  adjustments  with  the  real  world  and 
at  the  same  time  maintain  the  sublimity  of  his 
dream.  The  result  of  this  admixture  of  the  real 
and  the  unreal  is  confusion  thrice  confounded.  The 
man  that  walks  the  real  world  in  his  sleep  becomes 
such  a  tangled  mess  of  contradictions,  paradoxes,  and 
lies  that  he  has  to  lie  to  himself  in  order  to  stay 
asleep. 

In  passing,  it  may  be  noted  that  some  men  are 
remarkably  constituted  in  this  matter  of  self-decep 
tion.  They  excel  at  deceiving  themselves.  They 
believe,  and  they  help  others  to  believe.  It  becomes 
their  function  in  society,  and  some  of  them  are  paid 
large  salaries  for  helping  their  fellow-men  to  believe, 
for  instance,  that  they  are  not  as  other  animals;  for 
helping  the  king  to  believe,  and  his  parasites  and 
drudges  as  well,  that  he  is  God's  own  manager  over 
so  many  square  miles  of  earth-crust;  for  helping  the 
merchant  and  banking  classes  to  believe  that  society 


THE   SOMNAMBULISTS  45 

rests  on  their  shoulders,  and  that  civilization  would 
go  to  smash  if  they  got  out  from  under  and  ceased 
from  their  exploitations  and  petty  pilferings. 

Prize-fighting  is  terrible.  This  is  the  dictum  of 
the  man  who  walks  in  his  sleep.  He  prates  about 
it,  and  writes  to  the  papers  about  it,  and  worries  the 
legislators  about  it.  There  is  nothing  of  the  brute 
about  him.  He  is  a  sublimated  soul  that  treads  the 
heights  and  breathes  refined  ether  —  in  self-compari 
son  with  the  prize-fighter.  The  man  who  walks  in 
his  sleep  ignores  the  flesh  and  all  its  wonderful 
play  of  muscle,  joint,  and  nerve.  He  feels  that  there 
is  something  godlike  in  the  mysterious  deeps  of  his 
being,  denies  his  relationship  with  the  brute,  and 
proceeds  to  go  forth  into  the  world  and  express  by 
deeds  that  something  godlike  within  him. 

He  sits  at  a  desk  and  chases  dollars  through  the 
weeks  and  months  and  years  of  his  life.  To  him 
the  life  godlike  resolves  itself  into  a  problem  some 
thing  like  this :  Since  the  great  mass  of  men  toil  at 
producing  wealth,  how  best  can  he  get  between  the 
great  mass  of  men  and  the  wealth  they  produce,  and 
get  a  slice  for  himself?  With  tremendous  exercise 
of  craft,  deceit,  and  guile,  he  devotes  his  life  godlike 


46  THE   SOMNAMBULISTS 

to  this  purpose.  As  he  succeeds,  his  somnambulism 
grows  profound.  He  bribes  legislatures,  buys  judges, 
"controls"  primaries,  and  then  goes  and  hires  other 
men  to  tell  him  that  it  is  all  glorious  and  right. 
And  the  funniest  thing  about  it  is  that  this  arch- 
jleceiver  believes  all  that  they  tell  him.  He  reads 
only  the  newspapers  and  magazines  that  tell  him 
what  he  wants  to  be  told,  listens  only  to  the  biolo 
gists  who  tell  him  that  he  is  the  finest  product  of 
the  struggle  for  existence,  and  herds  only  with  his 
own  kind,  where,  like  the  monkey-folk,  they  teeter 
up  and  down  and  tell  one  another  how  great  they  are. 

In  the  course  of  his  life  godlike  he  ignores  the 
flesh  —  until  he  gets  to  table.  He  raises  his  hands 
in  horror  at  the  thought  of  the  brutish  prize-fighter, 
and  then  sits  down  and  gorges  himself  on  roast  beef, 
rare  and  red,  running  blood  under  every  sawing 
thrust  of  the  implement  called  a  knife.  He  has  a 
piece  of  cloth  which  he  calls  a  napkin,  with  which 
he  wipes  from  his  lips,  and  from  the  hair  on  his  lips, 
the  greasy  juices  of  the  meat. 

He  is  fastidiously  nauseated  at  the  thought  of 
two  prize-fighters  bruising  each  other  with  their 
fists;  and  at  the  same  time,  because  it  will  cost  him 


THE   SOMNAMBULISTS  47 

some  money,  he  will  refuse  to  protect  the  machines 
in  his  factory,  though  he  is  aware  that  the  lack  of 
such  protection  every  year  mangles,  batters,  and  de 
stroys  out  of  all  humanness  thousands  of  working- 
men,  women,  and  children.  He  will  chatter  about 
things  refined  and  spiritual  and  godlike  like  him 
self,  and  he  and  the  men  who  herd  with  him  will 
calmly  adulterate  the  commodities  they  put  upon 
the  market  and  which  annually  kill  tens  of  thou 
sands  of  babies  and  young  children. 

He  will  recoil  at  the  suggestion  of  the  horrid 
spectacle  of  two  men  confronting  each  other  with 
gloved  hands  in  the  roped  arena,  and  at  the  same 
time  he  will  clamor  for  larger  armies  and  larger 
navies,  for  more  destructive  war  machines,  which, 
with  a  single  discharge,  will  disrupt  and  rip  to  pieces 
more  human  beings  than  have  died  in  the  whole 
history  of  prize-fighting.  He  will  bribe  a  city  council 
for  a  franchise  or  a  state  legislature  for  a  commer 
cial  privilege;  but  he  has  never  been  known,  in  all 
his  sleep-walking  history,  to  bribe  any  legislative 
body  in  order  to  achieve  any  moral  end,  such 
as,  for  instance,  abolition  of  prize-fighting,  child- 
labor  laws,  pure  food  bills,  or  old  age  pensions. 


48  THE   SOMNAMBULISTS 

"Ah,  but  we  do  not  stand  for  the  commercial 
life,"  object  the  refined,  scholarly,  and  professional 
men.  They  also  are  sleep-walkers.  They  do  not 
stand  for  the  commercial  life,  but  neither  do  they 
stand  against  it  with  all  their  strength.  They  sub 
mit  to  it,  to  the  brutality  and  carnage  of  it.  They 
develop  classical  economists  who  announce  that  the 
only  possible  way  for  men  and  women  to  get  food 
and  shelter  is  by  the  existing  method.  They  pro 
duce  university  professors,  men  who  claim  the  role 
of  teachers,  and  who  at  the  same  time  claim  that 
the  austere  ideal  of  learning  is  passionless  pursuit 
of  passionless  intelligence.  They  serve  the  men 
who  lead  the  commercial  life,  give  to  their  sons  som 
nambulistic  educations,  preach  that  sleep-walking  is 
the  only  way  to  walk,  and  that  the  persons  who  walk 
otherwise  are  atavisms  or  anarchists.  They  paint 
pictures  for  the  commercial  men,  write  books  for 
them,  sing  songs  for  them,  act  plays  for  them,  and 
dose  them  with  various  drugs  when  their  bodies 
have  grown  gross  or  dyspeptic  from  overeating  and 
lack  of  exercise. 

Then  there  are  the  good,  kind  somnambulists 
who  don't  prize-fight,  who  don't  play  the  commercial 


THE   SOMNAMBULISTS  49 

game,  who  don't  teach  and  preach  somnambulism, 
who  don't  do  anything  except  live  off  of  the  divi 
dends  that  are  coined  out  of  the  wan,  white  fluid 
that  runs  in  the  veins  of  little  children,  out  of  mothers' 
tears,  the  blood  of  strong  men,  and  the  groans  and 
sighs  of  the  old.  The  receiver  is  as  bad  as  the  thief 
—  aye,  and  the  thief  is  finer  than  the  receiver;  he  at 
least  has  the  courage  to  run  the  risk.  But  the  good, 
kind  people  who  don't  do  anything  won't  believe  this, 
and  the  assertion  will  make  them  angry  —  for  a  mo 
ment.  They  possess  several  magic  phrases,  which  are 
like  the  incantations  of  a  voodoo  doctor  driving  devils 
away.  The  phrases  that  the  good,  kind  people  repeat 
to  themselves  and  to  one  another  sound  like  "absti 
nence,"  "temperance,"  "thrift,"  "virtue."  Some 
times  they  say  them  backward,  when  they  sound  like 
"prodigality,"  "drunkenness,"  "wastefulness,"  and 
"immorality."  They  do  not  really  know  the  mean 
ing  of  these  phrases,  but  they  think  they  do,  and 
that  is  all  that  is  necessary  for  somnambulists.  The 
calm  repetition  of  such  phrases  invariably  drives  away 
the  waking  devils  and  lulls  to  slumber. 

Our  statesmen  sell  themselves  and  their  country 
for  gold.     Our  municipal   servants  and  state  legis- 


50  THE  SOMNAMBULISTS 

lators  commit  countless  treasons.  The  world  of 
graft !  The  world  of  betrayal !  The  world  of  som 
nambulism,  whose  exalted  and  sensitive  citizens  are 
outraged  by  the  knockouts  of  the  prize-ring,  and  who 
annually  not  merely  knock  out,  but  kill,  thousands  of 
babies  and  children  by  means  of  child  labor  and  adul 
terated  food.  Far  better  to  have  the  front  of  one's 
face  pushed  in  by  the  fist  of  an  honest  prize-fighter 
than  to  have  the  lining  of  one's  stomach  corroded  by 
the  embalmed  beef  of  a  dishonest  manufacturer. 

In  a  prize-fight  men  are  classed.  A  light-weight 
fights  with  a  light-weight;  he  never  fights  with  a 
heavy-weight,  and  foul  blows  are  not  allowed.  Yet 
in  the  world  of  the  somnambulists,  where  soar  the 
sublimated  spirits,  there  are  no  classes,  and  foul 
blows  are  continually  struck  and  never  disallowed. 
Only  they  are  not  called  foul  blows.  The  world  of 
claw  and  fang  and  fist  and  club  has  passed  away  — 
so  say  the  somnambulists.  A  rebate  is  not  an  elon 
gated  claw.  A  Wall  Street  raid  is  not  a  fang  slash. 
Dummy  boards  of  directors  and  fake  accountings 
are  not  foul  blows  of  the  fist  under  the  belt.  A 
present  of  coal  stock  by  a  mine  operator  to  a  rail 
road  official  is  not  a  claw  rip  to  the  bowels  of  a  rival 


THE  SOMNAMBULISTS  51 

mine  operator.  The  hundred  million  dollars  with 
which  a  combination  beats  down  to  his  knees  a 
man  with  a  million  dollars  is  not  a  club.  The  man 
who  walks  in  his  sleep  says  it  is  not  a  club.  So  say 
all  of  his  kind  with  which  he  herds.  They  gather 
together  and  solemnly  and  gloatingly  make  and 
repeat  certain  noises  that  sound  like  "discretion," 
"acumen,"  "initiative,"  "enterprise."  These  noises 
are  especially  gratifying  when  they  are  made  back 
ward.  They  mean  the  same  things,  but  they  sound 
different.  And  in  either  case,  forward  or  backward, 
the  spirit  of  the  dream  is  not  disturbed. 

When  a  man  strikes  a  foul  blow  in  the  prize-ring 
the  fight  is  immediately  stopped,  he  is  declared  the 
loser,  and  he  is  hissed  by  the  audience  as  he  leaves 
the  ring.  But  when  a  man  who  walks  in  his  sleep 
strikes  a  foul  blow  he  is  immediately  declared  the 
victor  and  awarded  the  prize;  and  amid  accla 
mations  he  forthwith  turns  his  prize  into  a  seat  in 
the  United  States  Senate,  into  a  grotesque  palace  on 
Fifth  Avenue,  and  into  endowed  churches,  universi 
ties  and  libraries,  to  say  nothing  of  subsidized  news 
papers,  to  proclaim  his  greatness. 

The   red   animal   in  the   somnambulist  will  out. 


52  THE  SOMNAMBULISTS 

He  decries  the  carnal  combat  of  the  prize-ring,  and 
compels  the  red  animal  to  spiritual  combat.  The 
poisoned  lie,  the  nasty,  gossiping  tongue,  the  bru 
tality  of  the  unkind  epigram,  the  business  and  social 
nastiness  and  treachery  of  to-day  —  these  are  the 
thrusts  and  scratches  of  the  red  animal  when  the 
somnambulist  is  in  charge.  They  are  not  the  upper 
cuts  and  short  arm  jabs  and  jolts  and  slugging  blows 
of  the  spirit.  They  are  the  foul  blows  of  the  spirit 
that  have  never  been  disbarred,  as  the  foul  blows  of 
the  prize-ring  have  been  disbarred.  (Would  it  not 
be  preferable  for  a  man  to  strike  one  full  on  the 
mouth  with  his  fist  than  for  him  to  tell  a  lie  about  one, 
or  malign  those  that  are  nearest  and  dearest  ?) 

For  these  are  the  crimes  of  the  spirit,  and,  alas ! 
they  are  so  much  more  frequent  than  blows  on 
the  mouth.  And  whosoever  exalts  the  spirit  over  the 
flesh,  by  his  own  creed  avers  that  a  crime  of  the 
spirit  is  vastly  more  terrible  than  a  crime  of  the  flesh. 
Thus  stand  the  somnambulists  convicted  by  their 
own  creed  —  only  they  are  not  real  men,  alive  and 
awake,  and  they  proceed  to  mutter  magic  phrases 
that  dispel  all  doubt  as  to  their  undiminished  and 
eternal  gloriousness. 


THE   SOMNAMBULISTS  53 

It  is  well  enough  to  let  the  ape  and  tiger  die,  but 
it  is  hardly  fair  to  kill  off  the  natural  and  courageous 
apes  and  tigers  and  allow  the  spawn  of  cowardly 
apes  and  tigers  to  live.  The  prize-fighting  apes  and 
tigers  will  die  all  in  good  time  in  the  course  of  natural 
evolution,  but  they  will  not  die  so  long  as  the  cowardly, 
somnambulistic  apes  and  tigers  club  and  scratch  and 
slash.  This  is  not  a  brief  for  the  prize-fighter.  It  is 
a  blow  of  the  fist  between  the  eyes  of  the  somnam 
bulists,  teetering  up  and  down,  muttering  magic 
phrases,  and  thanking  God  that  they  are  not  as  other 
animals. 

GLEN  ELLEN,  CALIFORNIA, 
June,  1906. 


THE  DIGNITY  OF  DOLLARS 


THE  DIGNITY  OF  DOLLARS 

MAN  is  a  blind,  helpless  creature.  He  looks 
back  with  pride  upon  his  goodly  heritage  of 
the  ages,  and  yet  obeys  unwittingly  every 
mandate  of  that  heritage;  for  it  is  incarnate  with 
him,  and  in  it  are  imbedded  the  deepest  roots  of  his 
soul.  Strive  as  he  will,  he  cannot  escape  it  —  un 
less  he  be  a  genius,  one  of  those  rare  creations  to 
whom  alone  is  granted  the  privilege  of  doing  entirely 
new  and  original  things  in  entirely  new  and  original 
ways.  But  the  common  clay-born  man,  possessing 
only  talents,  may  do  only  what  has  been  done 
before  him.  At  the  best,  if  he  work  hard,,  and 
cherish  himself  exceedingly,  he  may  duplicate  any 
or  all  previous  performances  of  his  kind;  he  may 
even  do  some  of  them  better;  but  there  he  stops, 
the  composite  hand  of  his  whole  ancestry  bearing 
heavily  upon  him. 

And  again,  in  the  matter  of  his  ideas,  which  have 
been  thrust  upon  him,  and  which  he  has  been  busily 

57 


58         THE  DIGNITY  OF  DOLLARS 

garnering  from  the  great  world  ever  since  the 
day  when  his  eyes  first  focussed  and  he  drew, 
startled,  against  the  warm  breast  of  his  mother  — 
the  tyranny  of  these  he  cannot  shake  off.  Servants 
of  his  will,  they  at  the  same  time  master  him. 
They  may  not  coerce  genius,  but  they  dictate  and 
sway  every  action  of  the  clay-born.  If  ne  hesitate 
on  the  verge  of  a  new  departure,  they  whip  him 
back  into  the  well-greased  groove;  if  he  pause,  be 
wildered,  at  sight  of  some  unexplored  domain,  they 
rise  like  ubiquitous  finger-posts  and  direct  him  by 
the  village  path  to  the  communal  meadow.  And  he 
permits  these  things,  and  continues  to  permit  them, 
for  he  cannot  help  them,  and  he  is  a  slave.  Out  of 
his  ideas  he  may  weave  cunning  theories,  beautiful 
ideals;  but  he  is  working  with  ropes  of  sand.  At 
the  slightest  stress,  the  last  least  bit  of  cohesion  flits 
away,  and  each  idea  flies  apart  from  its  fellows, 
while  all  clamor  that  he  do  this  thing,  or  think  this 
thing,  in  the  ancient  and  time-honored  way.  He  is 
only  a  clay-born;  so  he  bends  his  neck.  He  knows 
further  that  the  clay-born  are  a  pitiful,  pitiless 
majority,  and  that  he  may  do  nothing  which  they 
do  not  do. 


THE   DIGNITY  OF  DOLLARS         59 

It  is  only  in  some  way  such  as  this  that  we  may 
understand  and  explain  the  dignity  which  attaches 
itself  to  dollars.  In  the  watches  of  the  night,  we 
may  assure  ourselves  that  there  is  no  such  dignity; 
but  jostling  with  our  fellows  in  the  white  light  of 
day,  we  find  that  it  does  exist,  and  that  we  ourselves 
measure  ourselves  by  the  dollars  we  happen  to 
possess.  They  give  us  confidence  and  carriage  and 
dignity  —  aye,  a  personal  dignity  which  goes  down 
deeper  than  the  garments  with  which  we  hide  our 
nakedness.  The  world,  when  it  knows  nothing 
else  of  him,  measures  a  man  by  his  clothes;  but 
the  man  himself,  if  he  be  neither  a  genius  nor  a  phi 
losopher,  but  merely  a  clay-born,  measures  himself  by 
his  pocket-book.  He  cannot  help  it,  and  can  no  more 
fling  it  from  him  than  can  the  bashful  young  man 
his  self-consciousness  when  crossing  a  ballroom 
floor. 

I  remember  once  absenting  myself  from  civiliza 
tion  for  weary  months.  When  I  returned,  it  was  to 
a  strange  city  in  another  country.  The  people  were 
but  slightly  removed  from  my  own  breed,  and  they 
spoke  the  same  tongue,  barring  a  certain  barbarous 
accent  which  I  learned  was  far  older  than  the  one 


60         THE  DIGNITY  OF  DOLLARS 

imbibed  by  me  with  my  mother's  milk.  A  fur  cap, 
soiled  and  singed  by  many  camp-fires,  half  sheltered 
the  shaggy  tendrils  of  my  uncut  hair.  My  foot-gear 
was  of  walrus  hide,  cunningly  blended  with  seal  gut. 
The  remainder  of  my  dress  was  as  primal  and  un 
couth.  I  was  a  sight  to  give  merriment  to  gods  and 
men.  Olympus  must  have  roared  at  my  coming. 
The  world,  knowing  me  not,  could  judge  me  by  my 
clothes  alone.  But  I  refused  to  be  so  judged.  My 
spiritual  backbone  stiffened,  and  I  held  my  head 
high,  looking  all  men  in  the  eyes.  And  I  did  these 
things,  not  that  I  was  an  egotist,  not  that  I  was  im 
pervious  to  the  critical  glances  of  my  fellows,  but 
because  of  a  certain  hogskin  belt,  plethoric  and  sweat- 
bewrinkled,  which  buckled  next  the  skin  above  the 
hips.  Oh,  it's  absurd,  I  grant,  but  had  that  belt  not 
been  so  circumstanced  and  so  situated,  I  should  have 
shrunk  away  into  side  streets  and  back  alleys,  walk 
ing  humbly  and  avoiding  all  gregarious  humans 
except  those  who  were  likewise  abroad  without  belts. 
Why  ?  I  do  not  know,  save  that  in  such  way  did 
my  fathers  before  me. 

Viewed  in  the  light  of  sober  reason,  the  whole 
thing  was  preposterous.     But  I  walked   down  the 


THE   DIGNITY  OF   DOLLARS         61 

gang-plank  with  the  mien  of  a  hero,  of  a  barbarian 
who  knew  himself  to  be  greater  than  the  civilization 
he  invaded.  I  was  possessed  of  the  arrogance  of  a 
Roman  governor.  At  last  I  knew  what  it  was  to  be 
born  to  the  purple,  and  I  took  my  seat  in  the  hotel 
carriage  as  though  it  were  my  chariot  about  to  pro- 
cede  with  me  to  the  imperial  palace.  People  dis 
creetly  dropped  their  eyes  before  my  proud  gaze, 
and  into  their  hearts  I  know  I  forced  the  query, 
What  manner  of  man  can  this  mortal  be  ?  I  was 
superior  to  convention,  and  the  very  garb  which 
otherwise  would  have  damned  me  tended  toward  my 
elevation.  And  all  this  was  due,  not  to  my  royal 
lineage,  nor  to  the  deeds  I  had  done  and  the  cham 
pions  I  had  overthrown,  but  to  a  certain  hogskin 
belt  buckled  next  the  skin.  The  sweat  of  months 
was  upon  it,  toil  had  defaced  it,  and  it  was  not  a 
creation  such  as  would  appeal  to  the  aesthetic  mind; 
but  it  was  plethoric.  There  was  the  arcanum;  each 
yellow  grain  conduced  to  my  exaltation,  and  the  sum 
of  these  grains  was  the  sum  of  my  mightiness.  Had 
they  been  less,  just  so  would  have  been  my  stature; 
more,  and  I  should  have  reached  the  sky. 

And  this  was  my  royal  progress  through  that  most 


62         THE  DIGNITY  OF  DOLLARS 

loyal  city.  I  purchased  a  host  of  things  from 
the  tradespeople,  and  bought  me  such  pleasures 
and  diversions  as  befitted  one  who  had  long  been 
denied.  I  scattered  my  gold  lavishly,  nor  did  I 
chaffer  over  prices  in  mart  or  exchange.  And,  be 
cause  of  these  things  I  did,  I  demanded  homage. 
Nor  was  it  refused.  I  moved  through  wind-swept 
groves  of  limber  backs;  across  sunny  glades,  lighted 
by  the  beaming  rays  from  a  thousand  obsequious 
eyes;  and  when  I  tired  of  this,  basked  on  the  green 
sward  of  popular  approval.  Money  was  very  good, 
I  thought,  and  for  the  time  was  content.  But  there 
rushed  upon  me  the  words  of  Erasmus,  "When  I  get 
some  money  I  shall  buy  me  some  Greek  books,  and 
afterward  some  clothes,"  and  a  great  shame  wrapped 
me  around.  But,  luckily  for  my  soul's  welfare,  I 
reflected  and  was  saved.  By  the  clearer  vision  vouch 
safed  me,  I  beheld  Erasmus,  fire-flashing,  heaven- 
born,  while  I  —  I  was  merely  a  clay-born,  a  son  of 
earth.  For  a  giddy  moment  I  had  forgotten  this, 
and  tottered.  And  I  rolled  over  on  my  greensward, 
caught  a  glimpse  of  a  regiment  of  undulating  backs, 
and  thanked  my  particular  gods  that  such  moods  of 
madness  were  passing  brief. 


THE  DIGNITY  OF   DOLLARS         63 

But  on  another  day,  receiving  with  kingly  con 
descension  the  service  of  my  good  subjects'  backs,  I 
remembered  the  words  of  another  man,  long  since 
laid  away,  who  was  by  birth  a  nobleman,  by  nature 
a  philosopher  and  a  gentleman,  and  who  by  circum 
stance  yielded  up  his  head  upon  the  block.  "That 
a  man  of  lead,"  he  once  remarked,  "who  has  no 
more  sense  than  a  log  of  wood,  and  is  as  bad  as  he 
is  foolish,  should  have  many  wise  and  good  men  to 
serve  him,  only  because  he  has  a  great  heap  of  that 
metal;  and  that  if,  by  some  accident  or  trick  of  law 
(which  sometimes  produces  as  great  changes  as 
chance  itself),  all  this  wealth  should  pass  from  the 
master  to  the  meanest  varlet  of  his  whole  family,  he 
himself  would  very  soon  become  one  of  his  servants, 
as  if  he  were  a  thing  that  belonged  to  his  wealth, 
and  so  was  bound  to  follow  its  fortune." 

And  when  I  had  remembered  this  much,  I  un 
wisely  failed  to  pause  and  reflect.  So  I  gathered  my 
belongings  together,  cinched  my  hogskin  belt  tight 
about  me,  and  went  away  to  my  own  country.  It 
was  a  very  foolish  thing  to  do.  I  am  sure  it  was. 
But  when  I  had  recovered  my  reason,  I  fell  upon 
my  particular  gods  and  berated  them  mightily,  and 


64         THE  DIGNITY  OF  DOLLARS 

as  penance  for  their  watchlessness  placed  them 
away  amongst  dust  and  cobwebs.  Oh  no,  not  for 
long.  They  are  again  enshrined,  as  bright  and 
polished  as  of  yore,  and  my  destiny  is  once  more  in 
their  keeping. 

It  is  given  that  travail  and  vicissitude  mark  time 
to  man's  footsteps  as  he  stumbles  onward  toward 
the  grave;  and  it  is  well.  Without  the  bitter  one 
may  not  know  the  sweet.  The  other  day  —  nay, 
it  was  but  yesterday  —  I  fell  before  the  rhythm  of 
fortune.  The  inexorable  pendulum  had  swung  the 
counter  direction,  and  there  was  upon  me  an  urgent 
need.  The  hogskin  belt  was  flat  as  famine,  nor  did 
it  longer  gird  my  loins.  From  my  window  I  could 
descry,  at  no  great  distance,  a  very  ordinary  mortal 
of  a  man,  working  industriously  among  his  cabbages. 
I  thought:  Here  am  I,  capable  of  teaching  him  much 
concerning  the  field  wherein  he  labors,  —  the  nitro- 
genic-why  of  the  fertilizer,  the  alchemy  of  the  sun, 
the  microscopic  cell-structure  of  the  plant,  the  cryptic 
chemistry  of  root  and  runner,  —  but  thereat  he 
straightened  his  work-wearied  back  and  rested. 
His  eyes  wandered  over  what  he  had  produced 
in  the  sweat  of  his  brow,  then  on  to  mine.  And  as 


I    UNIVhK 

V 

XS^CAL 
THE  DIGNITY  OF   DOLLARS         65 

he  stood  there  drearily,  he  became  reproach  incar 
nate.  "Unstable  as  water,"  he  said  (I  am  sure  he 
did),  —  "unstable  as  water,  thou  shalt  not  excel. 
Man,  where  are  your  cabbages  ?" 

I  shrank  back.  Then  I  waxed  rebellious.  I  re 
fused  to  answer  the  question.  He  had  no  right  to 
ask  it,  and  his  presence  was  an  affront  upon  the 
landscape.  And  a  dignity  entered  into  me,  and  my 
neck  was  stiffened,  my  head  poised.  I  gathered 
together  certain  certificates  of  goods  and  chattels, 
pointed  my  heels  toward  him  and  his  cabbages,  and 
journeyed  townward.  I  was  yet  a  man.  There  was 
naught  in  those  certificates  to  be  ashamed  of.  But 
alack-a-day !  While  my  heels  thrust  the  cabbage- 
man  beyond  the  horizon,  my  toes  were  drawing  me, 
faltering,  like  a  timid  old  beggar,  into  a  roaring 
spate  of  humanity  —  men,  women,  and  children 
without  end.  They  had  no  concern  with  me,  nor  I 
with  them.  I  knew  it;  I  felt  it.  Like  She,  after 
her  fire-bath  in  the  womb  of  the  world,  I  dwindled 
in  my  own  sight.  My  feet  were  uncertain  and 
heavy,  and  my  soul  became  as  a  meal  sack,  limp 
with  emptiness  and  tied  in  the  middle.  People 
looked  upon  me  scornfully,  pitifully,  reproachfully. 


66         THE  DIGNITY  OF  DOLLARS 

(I  can  swear  they  did.)  In  every  eye  I  read  the 
question,  Man,  where  are  your  cabbages  ? 

So  I  avoided  their  looks,  shrinking  close  to  the 
curbstone  and  by  furtive  glances  directing  my  prog 
ress.  At  last  I  came  hard  by  the  place,  and  peering 
stealthily  to  the  right  and  left  that  none  who  knew 
might  behold  me,  I  entered  hurriedly,  in  the  manner 
of  one  committing  an  abomination.  'Fore  God ! 
I  had  done  no  evil,  nor  had  I  wronged  any  man, 
nor  did  I  contemplate  evil;  yet  was  I  aware  of  evil. 
Why  ?  I  do  not  know,  save  that  there  goes  much 
dignity  with  dollars,  and  being  devoid  of  the  one  I 
was  destitute  of  the  other.  The  person  I  sought 
practised  a  profession  as  ancient  as  the  oracles  but 
far  more  lucrative.  It  is  mentioned  in  Exodus;  so 
it  must  have  been  created  soon  after  the  foundations 
of  the  world ;  and  despite  the  thunder  of  ecclesiastics 
and  the  mailed  hand  of  kings  and  conquerors,  it  has 
endured  even  to  this  day.  Nor  is  it  unfair  to  pre 
sume  that  the  accounts  of  this  most  remarkable 
business  will  not  be  closed  until  the  Trumps  of 
Doom  are  sounded  and  all  things  brought  to  final 
balance. 

Wherefore  it  was  in  fear  and  trembling,  and  with 


THE   DIGNITY  OF   DOLLARS          67 

great  modesty  of  spirit,  that  I  entered  the  Presence. 
To  confess  that  I  was  shocked  were  to  do  my  feel 
ings  an  injustice.  Perhaps  the  blame  may  be 
shouldered  upon  Shylock,  Fagin,  and  their  ilk; 
but  I  had  conceived  an  entirely  different  type  of 
individual.  This  man  —  why,  he  was  clean  to  look 
at,  his  eyes  were  blue,  with  the  tired  look  of  scholarly 
lucubrations,  and  his  skin  had  the  normal  pallor  of 
sedentary  existence.  He  was  reading  a  book,  sober 
and  leather-bound,  while  on  his  finely  moulded,  intel 
lectual  head  reposed  a  black  skull-cap.  For  all  the 
world  his  look  and  attitude  were  those  of  a  college 
professor.  My  heart  gave  a  great  leap.  Here  was 
hope!  But  no;  he  fixed  me  with  a  cold  and  glitter 
ing  eye,  searching  with  the  chill  of  space  till  my 
financial  status  stood  before  him  shivering  and 
ashamed.  I  communed  with  myself:  By  his  brow 
he  is  a  thinker,  but  his  intellect  has  been  prostituted 
to  a  mercenary  exaction  of  toll  from  misery.  His 
nerve  centres  of  judgment  and  will  have  not  been 
employed  in  solving  the  problems  of  life,  but  in 
maintaining  his  own  solvency  by  the  insolvency  of 
others.  He  trades  upon  sorrow  and  draws  a  liveli 
hood  from  misfortune.  He  transmutes  tears  into 


68         THE  DIGNITY  OF  DOLLARS 

treasure,  and  from  nakedness  and  hunger  garbs 
himself  in  clean  linen  and  develops  the  round  of  his 
belly.  He  is  a  bloodsucker  and  a  vampire.  He 
lays  unholy  hands  on  heaven  and  hell  at  cent  per 
cent,  and  his  very  existence  is  a  sacrilege  and  a 
blasphemy.  And  yet  here  am  I,  wilting  before  him, 
an  arrant  coward,  with  no  respect  for  him  and  less 
for  myself.  Why  should  this  shame  be  ?  Let  me 
rouse  in  my  strength  and  smite  him,  and  by  so  doing, 
wipe  clean  one  offensive  page. 

But  no.  As  I  said,  he  fixed  me  with  a  cold  and 
glittering  eye,  and  in  it  was  the  aristocrat's  undis 
guised  contempt  for  the  canaille.  Behind  him  was 
the  solid  phalanx  of  a  bourgeois  society.  Law  and 
order  upheld  him,  while  I  titubated,  cabbageless, 
on  the  ragged  edge.  Moreover,  he  was  possessed 
of  a  formula  whereby  to  extract  juice  from  a 
flattened  lemon,  and  he  would  do  business  with 
me. 

I  told  him  my  desires  humbly,  in  quavering  syl 
lables.  In  return,  he  craved  my  antecedents  and 
residence,  pried  into  my  private  life,  insolently  de 
manded  how  many  children  had  I  and  did  I  live  in 
wedlock,  and  asked  divers  other  unseemly  and  de- 


THE  DIGNITY  OF  DOLLARS         69 

grading  questions.  Aye,  I  was  treated  like  a  thief 
convicted  before  the  act,  till  I  produced  my  certifi 
cates  of  goods  and  chattels  aforementioned.  Never 
had  they  appeared  so  insignificant  and  paltry  as 
then,  when  he  sniffed  over  them  with  the  air  of  one 
disdainfully  doing  a  disagreeable  task.  It  is  said, 
"Thou  shalt  not  lend  upon  usury  to  thy  brother; 
usury  of  money,  usury  of  victuals,  usury  of  anything 
that  is  lent  upon  usury;"  but  he  evidently  was  not 
my  brother,  for  he  demanded  seventy  per  cent.  I 
put  my  signature  to  certain  indentures,  received  my 
pottage,  and  fled  from  his  presence. 

Faugh !  I  was  glad  to  be  quit  of  it.  How  good 
the  outside  air  was !  I  only  prayed  that  neither  my 
best  friend  nor  my  worst  enemy  should  ever  become 
aware  of  what  had  just  transpired.  Ere  I  had  gone 
a  block  I  noticed  that  the  sun  had  brightened  per 
ceptibly,  the  streets  become  less  sordid,  the  gutter 
mud  less  filthy.  In  people's  eyes  the  cabbage  ques 
tion  no  longer  brooded.  And  there  was  a  spring  to 
my  body,  an  elasticity  of  step  as  I  covered  the  pave 
ment.  Within  me  coursed  an  unwonted  sap,  and  I 
felt  as  though  I  were  about  to  burst  out  into  leaves 
and  buds  and  green  things.  My  brain  was  clear 


70         THE  DIGNITY  OF  DOLLARS 

and  refreshed.  There  was  a  new  strength  to  my 
arm.  My  nerves  were  tingling  and  I  was  a-pulse 
with  the  times.  All  men  were  my  brothers.  Save 
one  —  yes,  save  one.  I  would  go  back  and  wreck 
the  establishment.  I  would  disrupt  that  leather- 
bound  volume,  violate  that  black  skull-cap,  burn  the 
accounts.  But  before  fancy  could  father  the  act,  I 
recollected  myself  and  all  which  had  passed.  Nor 
did  I  marvel  at  my  new-born  might,  at  my  ancient 
dignity  which  had  returned.  There  was  a  tinkling 
chink  as  I  ran  the  yellow  pieces  through  my  fingers, 
and  with  the  golden  music  rippling  round  me  I 
caught  a  deeper  insight  into  the  mystery  of  things. 

OAKLAND,  CALIFORNIA, 
February,  1900. 


GOLIAH 


GOLIAH 

IN  1924  —  to  be  precise,  on  the  morning  of 
January  3  —  the  city  of  San  Francisco  awoke 
to  read  in  one  of  its  daily  papers  a  curious  letter, 
which  had  been  received  by  Walter  Bassett  and 
which  had  evidently  been  written  by  some  crank. 
Walter  Bassett  was  the  greatest  captain  of  industry 
west  of  the  Rockies,  and  was  one  of  the  small  group 
that  controlled  the  nation  in  everything  but  name. 
As  such,  he  was  the  recipient  of  lucubrations  from 
countless  cranks;  but  this  particular  lucubration 
was  so  different  from  the  average  ruck  of  similar 
letters  that,  instead  of  putting  it  into  the  waste-basket, 
he  had  turned  it  over  to  a  reporter.  It  was  signed 
"Goliah,"  and  the  superscription  gave  his  address 
as  "Palgrave  Island."  The  letter  was  as  follows :  — 

"MR.  WALTER  BASSETT, 
"  DEAR  SIR: 

"I  am  inviting  you,  with  nine  of  your  fellow-captains  of  in 
dustry,  to  visit  me  here  on  my  island  for  the  purpose  of  considering 
plans  for  the  reconstruction  of  society  upon  a  more  rational  basis. 

73 


74  GOLIAH 

Up  to  the  present,  social  evolution  has  been  a  blind  and  aimless, 
blundering  thing.  The  time  has  come  for  a  change.  Man  has 
risen  from  the  vitalized  slime  of  the  primeval  sea  to  the  mastery 
of  matter;  but  he  has  not  yet  mastered  society.  Man  is  to-day 
as  much  the  slave  to  his  collective  stupidity,  as  a  hundred  thousand 
generations  ago  he  was  a  slave  to  matter. 

"There  are  two  theoretical  methods  whereby  man  may  become 
the  master  of  society,  and  make  of  society  an  intelligent  and  effi 
cacious  device  for  the  pursuit  and  capture  of  happiness  and  laughter. 
The  first  theory  advances  the  proposition  that  no  government  can 
be  wiser  or  better  than  the  people  that  compose  that  government; 
that  reform  and  development  must  spring  from  the  individual; 
that  in  so  far  as  the  individuals  become  wiser  and  better,  by  that 
much  will  their  government  become  wiser  and  better;  in  short, 
that  the  majority  of  individuals  must  become  wiser  and  better 
before  their  government  becomes  wiser  and  better.  The  mob, 
the  political  convention,  the  abysmal  brutality  and  stupid  igno 
rance  of  all  concourses  of  people,  give  the  lie  to  this  theory.  In 
a  mob  the  collective  intelligence  and  mercy  is  that  of  the  least 
intelligent  and  most  brutal  members  that  compose  the  mob. 
On  the  other  hand,  a  thousand  passengers  will  surrender  them 
selves  to  the  wisdom  and  discretion  of  the  captain,  when  their 
ship  is  in  a  storm  on  the  sea.  In  such  matter,  he  is  the  wisest  and 
most  experienced  among  them. 

"The  second  theory  advances  the  proposition  that  the  majority 
of  the  people  are  not  pioneers,  that  they  are  weighted  down  by 
the  inertia  of  the  established;  that  the  government  that  is  repre 
sentative  of  them  represents  only  their  feebleness,  and  futility, 
and  brutishness;  that  this  blind  thing  called  government  is  not 


GOLIAH  75 

the  serf  of  their  wills,  but  that  they  are  the  serfs  of  it;  in  short, 
speaking  always  of  the  great  mass,  that  they  do  not  make  govern 
ment,  but  that  government  makes  them,  and  that  government  is 
and  has  been  a  stupid  and  awful  monster,  misbegotten  of  the  glim 
merings  of  intelligence  that  come  from  the  inertia-crushed  mass. 

"Personally,  I  incline  to  the  second  theory.  Also,  I  am  im 
patient.  For  a  hundred  thousand  generations,  from  the  first 
social  groups  of  our  savage  forebears,  government  has  remained 
a  monster.  To-day,  the  inertia-crushed  mass  has  less  laughter 
in  it  than  ever  before.  In  spite  of  man's  mastery  of  matter,  human 
suffering  and  misery  and  degradation  mar  the  fair  world. 

"Wherefore  I  have  decided  to  step  in  and  become  captain  of 
this  world-ship  for  a  while.  I  have  the  intelligence  and  the  wide 
vision  of  the  skilled  expert.  Also,  I  have  the  power.  I  shall  be 
obeyed.  The  men  of  all  the  world  shall  perform  my  bidding  and 
make  governments  so  that  they  shall  become  laughter-producers. 
These  modelled  governments  I  have  in  mind  shall  not  make  the 
people  happy,  wise,  and  noble  by  decree;  but  they  shall  give  op 
portunity  for  the  people  to  become  happy,  wise,  and  noble. 

"I  have  spoken.  I  have  invited  you,  and  nine  of  your  fellow- 
captains,  to  confer  with  me.  On  March  third  the  yacht  Energon 
will  sail  from  San  Francisco.  You  are  requested  to  be  on  board 
the  night  before.  This  is  serious.  The  affairs  of  the  world  must 
be  handled  for  a  time  by  a  strong  hand.  Mine  is  that  strong  hand. 
If  you  fail  to  obey  my  summons,  you  will  die.  Candidly,  I  do  not 
expect  that  you  will  obey.  But  your  death  for  failure  to  obey  will 
cause  obedience  on  the  part  of  those  I  subsequently  summon. 
You  will  have  served  a  purpose.  And  please  remember  that  I  have 
no  unscientific  sentimentality  about  the  value  of  human  life. 


76  GOLIAH 

I  carry  always  in  the  background  of  my  consciousness  the  innu 
merable  billions  of  lives  that  are  to  laugh  and  be  happy  in  future 
aeons  on  the  earth. 

"Yours  for  the  reconstruction  of  society, 

"  GOLIAH." 

The  publication  of  this  letter  did  not  cause  even 
local  amusement.  Men  might  have  smiled  to  them 
selves  as  they  read  it,  but  it  was  so  palpably  the  handi 
work  of  a  crank  that  it  did  not  merit  discussion. 
Interest  did  not  arouse  till  next  morning.  An  Asso 
ciated  Press  despatch  to  the  Eastern  states,  followed 
by  interviews  by  eager-nosed  reporters,  had  brought 
out  the  names  of  the  other  nine  captains  of  industry 
who  had  received  similar  letters  but  who  had  not 
thought  the  matter  of  sufficient  importance  to  be 
made  public.  But  the  interest  aroused  was  mild, 
and  it  would  have  died  out  quickly  had  not  Gabber- 
ton  cartooned  a  chronic  presidential  aspirant  as 
"Goliah."  Then  came  the  song  that  was  sung  hila 
riously  from  sea  to  sea,  with  the  refrain,  "Goliah 
will  catch  you  if  you  don't  watch  out." 

The  weeks  passed  and  the  incident  was  forgotten. 
Walter  Bassett  had  forgotten  it  likewise;  but  on  the 
evening  of  February  22,  he  was  called  to  the  telephone 


GOLIAH  77 

by  the  Collector  of  the  Port.  "I  just  wanted  to  tell 
you,"  said  the  latter,  "that  the  yacht  Energon  has 
arrived  and  gone  to  anchor  in  the  stream  off  Pier 
Seven." 

What  happened  that  night  Walter  Bassett  has 
never  divulged.  But  it  is  known  that  he  rode  down 
in  his  auto  to  the  water  front,  chartered  one  of 
Crowley's  launches,  and  was  put  aboard  the  strange 
yacht.  It  is  further  known  that  when  he  returned 
to  the  shore,  three  hours  later,  he  immediately 
despatched  a  sheaf  of  telegrams  to  his  nine  fellow- 
captains  of  industry  who  had  received  letters  from 
Goliah.  These  telegrams  were  similarly  worded, 
and  read:  "The  yacht  Energon  has  arrived. 
There  is  something  in  this.  I  advise  you  to  come." 

Bassett  was  laughed  at  for  his  pains.  It  was  a 
huge  laugh  that  went  up  (for  his  telegrams  had  been 
made  public),  and  the  popular  song  on  Goliah  re 
vived  and  became  more  popular  than  ever.  Goliah 
and  Bassett  were  cartooned  and  lampooned  unmerci 
fully,  the  former,  as  the  Old  Man  of  the  Sea,  riding 
on  the  latter's  neck.  The  laugh  tittered  and  rippled 
through  clubs  and  social  circles,  was  restrainedly 
merry  in  the  editorial  columns,  and  broke  out  in  loud 


78  GOLIAH 

guffaws  in  the  comic  weeklies.  There  was  a  serious 
side  as  well,  and  Bassett's  sanity  was  gravely  ques 
tioned  by  many,  and  especially  by  his  business  asso 
ciates. 

Bassett  had  ever  been  a  short-tempered  man,  and 
after  he  sent  the  second  sheaf  of  telegrams  to  his 
brother  captains,  and  had  been  laughed  at  again, 
he  remained  silent.  In  this  second  sheaf,  he  had 
said:  "Come,  I  implore  you.  As  you  value  your 
life,  come."  He  arranged  all  his  business  affairs  for 
an  absence,  and  on  the  night  of  March  2  went  on 
board  the  Energon.  The  latter,  properly  cleared, 
sailed  next  morning.  And  next  morning  the  news 
boys  in  every  city  and  town  were  crying  "Extra." 

In  the  slang  of  the  day,  Goliah  had  delivered  the 
goods.  The  nine  captains  of  industry  who  had 
failed  to  accept  his  invitation  were  dead.  A  sort  of 
violent  disintegration  of  the  tissues  was  the  report 
of  the  various  autopsies  held  on  the  bodies  of  the 
slain  millionnaires;  yet  the  surgeons  and  physicians 
(the  most  highly  skilled  in  the  land  had  participated) 
would  not  venture  the  opinion  that  the  men  had  been 
slain.  Much  less  would  they  venture  the  conclusion, 
"at  the  hands  of  parties  unknown."  It  was  all  too 


GOLIAH  79 

mysterious.  They  were  stunned.  Their  scientific 
credulity  broke  down.  They  had  no  warrant  in  the 
whole  domain  of  science  for  believing  that  an  anony 
mous  person  on  Palgrave  Island  had  murdered  the 
poor  gentlemen. 

One  thing  was  quickly  learned,  however;  namely, 
that  Palgrave  Island  was  no  myth.  It  was 
charted  and  well  known  to  all  navigators,  lying  on 
the  line  of  160  west  longitude,  right  at  its  inter 
section  by  the  tenth  parallel  north  latitude,  and  only 
a  few  miles  away  from  Diana  Shoal.  Like  Midway 
and  Fanning,  Palgrave  Island  was  isolated,  volcanic 
and  coral  in  formation.  Furthermore,  it  was  unin 
habited.  A  survey  ship,  in  1887,  had  visited  the  place 
and  reported  the  existence  of  several  springs  and  of  a 
good  harbor  that  was  very  dangerous  of  approach. 
And  that  was  all  that  was  known  of  the  tiny  speck 
of  land  that  was  soon  to  have  focussed  on  it  the  awed 
attention  of  the  world. 

Goliah  remained  silent  till  March  24.  On  the 
morning  of  that  day,  the  newspapers  published  his 
second  letter,  copies  of  which  had  been  received 
by  the  ten  chief  politicians  of  the  United  States  — 
ten  leading  men  in  the  political  world  who  were 


8o  GOLIAH 

conventionally  known  as  "statesmen."  The  letter, 
with  the  same  superscription  as  before,  was  as 
follows :  — 

"DEAR  SIR: 

"  I  have  spoken  in  no  uncertain  tone.  I  must  be  obeyed. 
You  may  consider  this  an  invitation  or  a  summons;  but  if  you  still 
wish  to  tread  this  earth  and  laugh,  you  will  be  aboard  the  yacht 
Energon,  in  San  Francisco  harbor,  not  later  than  the  evening  of 
April  5.  It  is  my  wish  and  my  will  that  you  confer  with  me  here 
on  Palgrave  Island  in  the  matter  of  reconstructing  society  upon 
some  rational  basis. 

"Do  not  misunderstand  me,  when  I  tell  you  that  I  am  one  with 
a  theory.  I  want  to  see  that  theory  work,  and  therefore  I  call 
upon  your  cooperation.  In  this  theory  of  mine,  lives  are  but 
pawns;  I  deal  with  quantities  of  lives.  I  am  after  laughter, 
and  those  that  stand  in  the  way  of  laughter  must  perish.  The 
game  is  big.  There  are  fifteen  hundred  million  human  lives  to-day 
on  the  planet.  What  is  your  single  life  against  them  ?  It  is  as 
naught,  in  my  theory.  And  remember  that  mine  is  the  power. 
Remember  that  I  am  a  scientist,  and  that  one  life,  or  one  million 
of  lives,  mean  nothing  to  me  as  arrayed  against  the  countless 
billions  of  billions  of  the  lives  of  the  generations  to  come.  It  is 
for  their  laughter  that  I  seek  to  reconstruct  society  now;  and 
against  them  your  own  meagre  little  life  is  a  paltry  thing  indeed. 

"Whoso  has  power  can  command  his  fellows.  By  virtue  of 
that  military  device  known  as  the  phalanx,  Alexander  conquered 
his  bit  of  the  world.  By  virtue  of  that  chemical  device,  gunpowder, 
Cortes  with  his  several  hundred  cutthroats  conquered  the  empire 


GOLIAH  81 

of  the  Montezumas.  Now  I  am  in  possession  of  a  device  that  is 
all  my  own.  In  the  course  of  a  century  not  more  than  half  a 
dozen  fundamental  discoveries  or  inventions  are  made.  I  have 
made  such  an  invention.  The  possession  of  it  gives  me  the  mastery 
of  the  world.  I  shall  use  this  invention,  not  for  commercial  ex 
ploitation,  but  for  the  good  of  humanity.  For  that  purpose  I  want 
help  —  willing  agents,  obedient  hands;  and  I  am  strong  enough 
to  compel  the  service.  I  am  taking  the  shortest  way,  though  I  am 
in  no  hurry.  I  shall  not  clutter  my  speed  with  haste. 

"The  incentive  of  material  gain  developed  man  from  the  savage 
to  the  semi-barbarian  he  is  to-day.  This  incentive  has  been  a 
useful  device  for  the  development  of  the  human;  but  it  has  now 
fulfilled  its  function  and  is  ready  to  be  cast  aside  into  the  scrap- 
heap  of  rudimentary  vestiges  such  as  gills  in  the  throat  and  belief 
in  the  divine  right  of  kings.  Of  course  you  do  not  think  so;  but 
I  do  not  see  that  that  will  prevent  you  from  aiding  me  to  fling  the 
anachronism  into  the  scrap-heap.  For  I  tell  you  now  that  the  time 
has  come  when  mere  food  and  shelter  and  similar  sordid  things 
shall  be  automatic,  as  free  and  easy  and  involuntary  of  access  as 
the  air.  I  shall  make  them  automatic,  what  of  my  discovery  and 
the  power  that  discovery  gives  me.  And  with  food  and  shelter 
automatic,  the  incentive  of  material  gain  passes  away  from  the 
world  forever.  With  food  and  shelter  automatic,  the  higher 
incentives  will  universally  obtain  —  the  spiritual,  aesthetic,  and 
intellectual  incentives  that  will  tend  to  develop  and  make  beautiful 
and  noble  body,  mind,  and  spirit.  Then  all  the  world  will  be 
dominated  by  happiness  and  laughter.  It  will  be  the  reign  of 

universal  laughter. 

"Yours  for  that  day, 

"  GOLIAH." 


82  GOLIAH 

Still  the  world  would  not  believe.  The  ten  politi 
cians  were  at  Washington,  so  that  they  did  not  have 
the  opportunity  of  being  convinced  that  Bassett  had 
had,  and  not  one  of  them  took  the  trouble  to  journey 
out  to  San  Francisco  to  make  the  opportunity.  As 
for  Goliah,  he  was  hailed  by  the  newspapers  as 
another  Tom  Lawson  with  a  panacea;  and  there 
were  specialists  in  mental  disease  who,  by  analysis 
of  Goliah's  letters,  proved  conclusively  that  he  was 
a  lunatic. 

The  yacht  Energon  arrived  in  the  harbor  of  San 
Francisco  on  the  afternoon  of  April  5,  and  Bassett 
came  ashore.  But  the  Energon  did  not  sail  next  day, 
for  not  one  of  the  ten  summoned  politicians  had 
elected  to  make  the  journey  to  Palgrave  Island.  The 
newsboys,  however,  called  "Extra"  that  day  in  all 
the  cities.  The  ten  politicians  were  dead.  The 
yacht,  lying  peacefully  at  anchor  in  the  harbor,  be 
came  the  centre  of  excited  interest.  She  was  sur 
rounded  by  a  flotilla  of  launches  and  rowboats,  and 
many  tugs  and  steamboats  ran  excursions  to  her. 
While  the  rabble  was  firmly  kept  off,  the  proper 
authorities  and  even  reporters  were  permitted  to 
board  her.  The  mayor  of  San  Francisco  and  the 


GOLIAH  83 

chief  of  police  reported  that  nothing  suspicious  was 
to  be  seen  upon  her,  and  the  port  authorities  an 
nounced  that  her  papers  were  correct  and  in  order 
in  every  detail.  Many  photographs  and  columns 
of  descriptive  matter  were  run  in  the  newspapers. 

The  crew  was  reported  to  be  composed  principally 
of  Scandinavians,  —  fair-haired,  blue-eyed  Swedes, 
Norwegians  afflicted  with  the  temperamental  melan 
choly  of  their  race,  stolid  Russian  Finns,  and  a 
slight  sprinkling  of  Americans  and  English.  It  was 
noted  that  there  was  nothing  mercurial  and  flyaway 
about  them.  They  seemed  weighty  men,  oppressed 
by  a  sad  and  stolid  bovine-sort  of  integrity.  A 
sober  seriousness  and  enormous  certitude  character 
ized  all  of  them.  They  appeared  men  without  nerves 
and  without  fear,  as  though  upheld  by  some  over 
whelming  power  or  carried  in  the  hollow  of  some 
superhuman  hand.  The  captain,  a  sad-eyed,  strong- 
featured  American,  was  cartooned  in  the  papers  as 
"Gloomy  Gus"  (the  pessimistic  hero  of  the  comic 
supplement). 

Some  sea-captain  recognized  the  Energon  as  the 
yacht  Scud)  once  owned  by  Merrivale  of  the  New 
York  Yacht  Club.  With  this  clew  it  was  soon 


84  GOLIAH 

ascertained  that  the  Scud  had  disappeared  several 
years  before.  The  agent  who  sold  her  reported  the 
purchaser  to  be  merely  another  agent,  a  man  he  had 
seen  neither  before  nor  since.  The  yacht  had  been 
reconstructed  at  Duffey's  Shipyard  in  New  Jersey. 
The  change  in  her  name  and  registry  occurred  at 
that  time  and  had  been  legally  executed.  Then 
the  Energon  had  disappeared  in  the  shroud  of 
mystery. 

In  the  meantime,  Basset  was  going  crazy  —  at 
least  his  friends  and  business  associates  said  so.  He 
kept  away  from  his  vast  business  enterprises  and 
said  that  he  must  hold  his  hands  until  the  other 
masters  of  the  world  could  join  with  him  in  the  recon 
struction  of  society  —  proof  indubitable  that  Goliah's 
bee  had  entered  his  bonnet.  To  reporters  he  had 
little  to  say.  He  was  not  at  liberty,  he  said,  to  relate 
what  he  had  seen  on  Palgrave  Island;  but  he  could 
assure  them  that  the  matter  was  serious,  the  most 
serious  thing  that  had  ever  happened.  His  final 
word  was  that  the  world  was  on  the  verge  of  a  turn 
over,  for  good  or  ill  he  did  not  know,  but,  one  way 
or  the  other,  he  was  absolutely  convinced  that  the 
turnover  was  coming.  As  for  business,  business 


GOLIAH  85 

could  go  hang.  He  had  seen  things,  he  had,  and 
that  was  all  there  was  to  it. 

There  was  a  great  telegraphing,  during  this  period, 
between  the  local  Federal  officials  and  the  state  and 
war  departments  at  Washington.  A  secret  attempt 
was  made  late  one  afternoon  to  board  the  Energon 
and  place  the  captain  under  arrest  —  the  Attorney- 
General  having  given  the  opinion  that  the  captain 
could  be  held  for  the  murder  of  the  ten  "statesmen." 
The  government  launch  was  seen  to  leave  Meigg's 
Wharf  and  steer  for  the  Energon,  and  that  was  the 
last  ever  seen  of  the  launch  and  the  men  on  board  of 
it.  The  government  tried  to  keep  the  affair  hushed 
up,  but  the  cat  was  slipped  out  of  the  bag  by  the 
families  of  the  missing  men  and  the  papers  were 
rilled  with  monstrous  versions  of  the  affair. 

The  government  now  proceeded  to  extreme  meas 
ures.  The  battleship  Alaska  was  ordered  to  capture 
the  strange  yacht,  or,  failing  that,  to  sink  her.  These 
were  secret  instructions;  but  thousands  of  eyes, 
from  the  water  front  and  from  the  shipping  in  the 
harbor,  witnessed  what  happened  that  afternoon. 
The  battleship  got  under  way  and  steamed  slowly 
toward  the  Energon.  At  half  a  mile  distant  the 


86  GOLIAH 

battleship  blew  up  —  simply  blew  up,  that  was  all, 
her  shattered  frame  sinking  to  the  bottom  of  the  bay, 
a  riff-raff  of  wreckage  and  a  few  survivors  strewing 
the  surface.  Among  the  survivors  was  a  young 
lieutenant  who  had  had  charge  of  the  wireless  on 
board  the  Alaska.  The  reporters  got  hold  of  him 
first,  and  he  talked.  No  sooner  had  the  Alaska 
got  under  way,  he  said,  than  a  message  was  received 
from  the  Energon.  It  was  in  the  international  code, 
and  it  was  a  warning  to  the  Alaska  to  come  no  nearer 
than  half  a  mile.  He  had  sent  the  message,  through 
the  speaking  tube,  immediately  to  the  captain. 
He  did  not  know  anything  more,  except  that  the 
Energon  twice  repeated  the  message  and  that  five 
minutes  afterward  the  explosion  occurred.  The 
captain  of  the  Alaska  had  perished  with  his  ship,  and 
nothing  more  was  to  be  learned. 

The  Energon,  however,  promptly  hoisted  anchor 
and  cleared  out  to  sea.  A  great  clamor  was  raised 
by  the  papers;  the  government  was  charged  with 
cowardice  and  vacillation  in  its  dealings  with  a  mere 
pleasure  yacht  and  a  lunatic  who  called  himself 
"Goliah,"  and  immediate  and  decisive  action  was 
demanded.  Also,  a  great  cry  went  up  about  the 


GOLIAH  87 

loss  of  life,  especially  the  w,anton  killing  of  the  ten 
"statesmen."  Goliah  promptly  replied.  In  fact,  so 
prompt  was  his  reply  that  the  experts  in  wireless 
telegraphy  announced  that,  since  it  was  impossible 
to  send  wireless  messages  so  great  a  distance,  Goliah 
was  in  their  very  midst  and  not  on  Palgrave  Island. 
Goliah's  letter  was  delivered  to  the  Associated  Press 
by  a  messenger  boy  who  had  been  engaged  on  the 
street.  The  letter  was  as  follows :  — 

"What  are  a  few  paltry  lives  ?  In  your  insane  wars  you  destroy 
millions  of  lives  and  think  nothing  of  it.  In  your  fratricidal  com 
mercial  struggle  you  kill  countless  babes,  women,  and  men,  and 
you  triumphantly  call  the  shambles  'individualism/  I  call  it 
anarchy.  I  am  going  to  put  a  stop  to  your  wholesale  destruction 
of  human  beings.  I  want  laughter,  not  slaughter.  Those  of 
you  who  stand  in  the  way  of  laughter  will  get  slaughter. 

"Your  government  is  trying  to  delude  you  into  believing  that 
the  destruction  of  the  Alaska  was  an  accident.  Know  here 
and  now  that  it  was  by  my  orders  that  the  Alaska  was  destroyed. 
In  a  few  short  months,  all  battleships  on  all  seas  will  be  destroyed 
or  flung  to  the  scrap-heap,  and  all  nations  shall  disarm;  fortresses 
shall  be  dismantled,  armies  disbanded,  and  warfare  shall  cease 
from  the  earth.  Mine  is  the  power.  I  am  the  will  of  God.  The 
whole  world  shall  be  in  vassalage  to  me,  but  it  shall  be  a  vassalage 
of  peace. 

"I  am 

"  GOLIAH." 


88  GOLIAH 

"Blow  Palgrave  Island  out  of  the  water!"  was 
the  head-line  retort  of  the  newspapers.  The  gov 
ernment  was  of  the  same  frame  of  mind,  and  the 
assembling  of  the  fleets  began.  Walter  Bassett 
broke  out  in  ineffectual  protest,  but  was  swiftly 
silenced  by  the  threat  of  a  lunacy  commission. 
Goliah  remained  silent.  Against  Palgrave  Island 
five  great  fleets  were  hurled  —  the  Asiatic  Squadron, 
the  South  Pacific  Squadron,  the  North  Pacific 
Squadron,  the  Caribbean  Squadron,  and  half  of  the 
North  Atlantic  Squadron,  the  two  latter  coming 
through  the  Panama  Canal. 

"  I  have  the  honor  to  report  that  we  sighted  Palgrave  Island 
on  the  evening  of  April  29,"  ran  the  the  report  of  Captain  John 
son,  of  the  battleship  North  Dakota  to  the  Secretary  of  the  Navy. 
"  The  Asiatic  Squadron  was  delayed  and  did  not  arrive  until  the 
morning  of  April  30.  A  council  of  the  admirals  was  held,  and 
it  was  decided  to  attack  early  next  morning.  The  destroyer, 
Swift  VII \  crept  in,  unmolested,  and  reported  no  warlike  prepa 
rations  on  the  island.  It  noted  several  small  merchant  steamers 
in  the  harbor,  and  the  existence  of  a  small  village  in  a  hopelessly 
exposed  position  that  could  be  swept  by  our  fire. 

"It  had  been  decided  that  all  the  vessels  should  rush  in,  scattered, 
upon  the  island,  opening  fire  at  three  miles,  and  continuing  to  the 
edge  of  the  reef,  there  to  retain  loose  formation  and  engage.  Pal 
grave  Island  repeatedly  warned  us,  by  wireless,  in  the  interna- 


GOLIAH  89 

tional  code,  to  keep  outside  the  ten-mile  limit;   but  no  heed  was 
paid  to  the  warnings. 

"The  North  Dakota  did  not  take  part  in  the  movement  of  the 
morning  of  May  I.  This  was  due  to  a  slight  accident  of  the  pre 
ceding  night  that  temporarily  disabled  our  steering-gear.  The 
morning  of  May  I  broke  clear  and  calm.  There  was  a  slight 
breeze  from  the  southwest  that  quickly  died  away.  The  North 
Dakota  lay  twelve  miles  off  the  island.  At  the  signal  the  squadrons 
charged  in  upon  the  island,  from  all  sides,  at  full  speed.  Our 
wireless  receiver  continued  to  tick  off  warnings  from  the  island. 
The  ten-mile  limit  was  passed,  and  nothing  happened.  I  watched 
through  my  glasses.  At  five  miles  nothing  happened;  at  four 
miles  nothing  happened;  at  three  miles,  the  New  York,  in  the 
lead  on  our  side  of  the  island,  opened  fire.  She  fired  only  one  shot. 
Then  she  blew  up.  The  rest  of  the  vessels  never  fired  a  shot. 
They  began  to  blow  up,  everywhere,  before  our  eyes.  Several 
swerved  about  and  started  back,  but  they  failed  to  escape.  The 
destroyer,  Dart  XXX,  nearly  made  the  ten-mile  limit  when  she  blew 
up.  She  was  the  last  survivor.  No  harm  came  to  the  North 
Dakota,  and  that  night,  the  steering-gear  being  repaired,  I  gave 
orders  to  sail  for  San  Francisco." 

To  say  that  the  United  States  was  stunned  is  but 
to  expose  the  inadequacy  of  language.  The  whole 
world  was  stunned.  It  confronted  that  blight  of  the 
human  brain,  the  unprecedented.  Human  endeavor 
was  a  jest,  a  monstrous  futility,  when  a  lunatic  on  a 
lonely  island,  who  owned  a  yacht  and  an  exposed 


9o  GOLIAH 

village,  could  destroy  five  of  the  proudest  fleets  of 
Christendom.  And  how  had  he  done  it  ?  Nobody 
knew.  The  scientists  lay  down  in  the  dust  of  the 
common  road  and  wailed  and  gibbered.  They  did 
not  know.  Military  experts  committed  suicide  by 
scores.  The  mighty  fabric  of  warfare  they  had 
fashioned  was  a  gossamer  veil  rent  asunder  by  a 
miserable  lunatic.  It  was  too  much  for  their  sanity. 
Mere  human  reason  could  not  withstand  the  shock. 
As  the  savage  is  crushed  by  the  sleight-of-hand  of 
the  witch-doctor,  so  was  the  world  crushed  by  the 
magic  of  Golfah.  How  did  he  do  it  ?  It  was  the 
awful  face  of  the  Unknown  upon  which  the  world 
gazed  and  by  which  it  was  frightened  out  of  the 
memory  of  its  proudest  achievements. 

But  all  the  world  was  not  stunned.  There  was  the 
invariable  exception  —  the  Island  Empire  of  Japan. 
Drunken  with  the  wine  of  success  deep-quaffed, 
without  superstition  and  without  faith  in  aught  but 
its  own  ascendant  star,  laughing  at  the  wreckage  of 
science  and  mad  with  pride  of  race,  it  went  forth 
upon  the  way  of  war.  America's  fleets  had  been 
destroyed.  From  the  battlements  of  heaven  the 
multitudinous  ancestral  shades  of  Japan  leaned  down. 


GOLIAH  91 

The     opportunity,    God-given,    had     come.      The 
Mikado  was  in  truth  a  brother  to  the  gods. 

The  war-monsters  of  Japan  were  loosed  in  mighty 
fleets.  The  Philippines  were  gathered  in  as  a  child 
gathers  a  nosegay.  It  took  longer  for  the  battle 
ships  to  travel  to  Hawaii,  to  Panama,  and  to  the 
Pacific  Coast.  The  United  States  was  panic-stricken, 
and  there  arose  the  powerful  party  of  dishonorable 
peace.  In  the  midst  of  the  clamor  the  Energon 
arrived  in  San  Francisco  Bay  and  Goliah  spoke  once 
more.  There  was  a  little  brush  as  the  Energon  came 
in,  and  a  few  explosions  of  magazines  occurred  along 
the  war-tunnelled  hills  as  the  coast  defences  went  to 
smash.  Also,  the  blowing  up  of  the  submarine 
mines  in  the  Golden  Gate  made  a  remarkably  fine 
display.  Goliah's  message  to  the  people  of  San 
Francisco,  dated  as  usual  from  Palgrave  Island, 
was  published  in  the  papers.  It  ran :  — 

"Peace?  Peace  be  with  you.  You  shall  have  peace.  I 
have  spoken  to  this  purpose  before.  And  give  you  me  peace. 
Leave  my  yacht  Energon  alone.  Commit  one  overt  act  against 
her  and  not  one  stone  in  San  Francisco  shall  stand  upon 
another. 

"To-morrow  let  all  good  citizens  go  out  upon  the  hills  that 
slope  down  to  the  sea.  Go  with  music  and  laughter  and  garlands. 


92  GOLIAH 

Make  festival  for  the  new  age  that  is  dawning.  Be  like  children 
upon  your  hills,  and  witness  the  passing  of  war.  Do  not  miss 
the  opportunity.  It  is  your  last  chance  to  behold  what  hence 
forth  you  will  be  compelled  to  seek  in  museums  of  antiquities. 

"I  promise  you  a  merry  day, 

"  GOLIAH." 

The  madness  of  magic  was  in  the  air.  With  the 
people  it  was  as  if  all  their  gods  had  crashed  and  the 
heavens  still  stood.  Order  and  law  had  passed  away 
from  the  universe;  but  the  sun  still  shone,  the  wind 
still  blew,  the  flowers  still  bloomed  —  that  was  the 
amazing  thing  about  it.  That  water  should  continue 
to  run  downhill  was  a  miracle.  All  the  stabilities 
of  the  human  mind  and  human  achievement  were 
crumbling.  The  one  stable  thing  that  remained  was 
Goliah,  a  madman  on  an  island.  And  so  it  was  that 
the  whole  population  of  San  Francisco  went  forth 
next  day  in  colossal  frolic  upon  the  hills  that  over 
looked  the  sea.  Brass  bands  and  banners  went 
forth,  brewery  wagons  and  Sunday-school  picnics  — 
all  the  strange  heterogeneous  groupings  of  swarming 
metropolitan  life. 

On  the  sea-rim  rose  the  smoke  from  the  funnels 
of  a  hundred  hostile  vessels  of  war,  all  converging 
upon  the  helpless,  undefended  Golden  Gate.  And 


GOLIAH  93 

not  all  undefended,  for  out  through  the  Golden  Gate 
moved  the  Energon,  a  tiny  toy  of  white,  rolling  like 
a  straw  in  the  stiff  sea  on  the  bar  where  a  strong 
ebb-tide  ran  in  the  teeth  of  the  summer  sea-breeze. 
But  the  Japanese  were  cautious.  Their  thirty- 
and  forty-thousand-ton  battleships  slowed  down  half 
a  dozen  miles  offshore  and  manoeuvered  in  ponderous 
evolutions,  while  tiny  scout-boats  (lean,  six-funnelled 
destroyers)  ran  in,  cutting  blackly  the  flashing  sea 
like  so  many  sharks.  But,  compared  with  the  Ener 
gon,  they  were  leviathans.  Compared  with  them, 
the  Energon  was  as  the  sword  of  the  archangel  Mich 
ael,  and  they  the  forerunners  of  the  hosts  of  hell. 

But  the  flashing  of  the  sword,  the  good  people 
of  San  Francisco,  gathered  on  her  hills,  never  saw. 
Mysterious,  invisible,  it  cleaved  the  air  and  smote 
the  mightiest  blows  of  combat  the  world  had  ever 
witnessed.  The  good  people  of  San  Francisco  saw 
little  and  understood  less.  They  saw  only  a  million 
and  a  half  of  tons  of  brine-cleaving,  thunder-flinging 
fabrics  hurled  skyward  and  smashed  back  in  ruin 
to  sink  into  the  sea.  It  was  all  over  in  five  minutes. 
Remained  upon  the  wide  expanse  of  sea  only  the 
Energon,  rolling  white  and  toylike  on  the  bar. 


94  GOLIAH 

Goliah  spoke  to  the  Mikado  and  the  Elder  States 
men.  It  was  only  an  ordinary  cable  message, 
despatched  from  San  Francisco  by  the  captain  of  the 
Energon,  but  it  was  of  sufficient  moment  to  cause  the 
immediate  withdrawal  of  Japan  from  the  Philippines 
and  of  her  surviving  fleets  from  the  sea.  Japan  the 
sceptical  was  converted.  She  had  felt  the  weight 
of  Goliah's  arm.  And  meekly  she  obeyed  when 
Goliah  commanded  her  to  dismantle  her  war  vessels 
and  to  turn  the  metal  into  useful  appliances  for 
the  arts  of  peace.  In  all  the  ports,  navy-yards, 
machine-shops,  and  foundries  of  Japan  tens  of 
thousands  of  brown-skinned  artisans  converted  the 
war-monsters  into  myriads  of  useful  things,  such  as 
ploughshares  (Goliah  insisted  on  ploughshares),  gaso 
lene  engines,  bridge-trusses,  telephone  and  telegraph 
wires,  steel  rails,  locomotives,  and  rolling  stock  for 
railways.  It  was  a  world-penance  for  a  world  to 
see,  and  paltry  indeed  it  made  appear  that  earlier 
penance,  barefooted  in  the  snow,  of  an  emperor  to  a 
pope  for  daring  to  squabble  over  temporal  power. 

Goliah's  next  summons  was  to  the  ten  leading 
scientists  of  the  United  States.  This  time  there  was 
no  hesitancy  in  obeying.  The  savants  were  ludi- 


GOLIAH  95 

crously  prompt,  some  of  them  waiting  in  San  Fran 
cisco  for  weeks  so  as  not  to  miss  the  scheduled  sailing- 
date.  They  departed  on  the  Energon  on  June  15; 
and  while  they  were  on  the  sea,  on  the  way  to  Pal- 
grave  Island,  Goliah  performed  another  spectacular 
feat.  Germany  and  France  were  preparing  to  fly 
at  each  other's  throats.  Goliah  commanded  peace. 
They  ignored  the  command,  tacitly  agreeing  to  fight 
it  out  on  land  where  it  seemed  safer  for  the  bellig 
erently  inclined.  Goliah  set  the  date  of  June  19 
for  the  cessation  of  hostile  preparations.  Both 
countries  mobilized  their  armies  on  June  18,  and 
hurled  them  at  the  common  frontier.  And  on  June 
19,  Goliah  struck.  All  generals,  war-secretaries, 
and  jingo-leaders  in  the  two  countries  died  on  that 
day;  and  that  day  two  vast  armies,  undirected,  like 
strayed  sheep,  walked  over  each  other's  frontiers 
and  fraternized.  But  the  great  German  war  lord 
had  escaped  —  it  was  learned,  afterward,  by  hiding 
in  the  huge  safe  where  were  stored  the  secret  archives 
of  his  empire.  And  when  he  emerged  he  was  a  very 
penitent  war  lord,  and  like  the  Mikado  of  Japan  he 
was  set  to  work  beating  his  sword-blades  into  plough 
shares  and  pruning-hooks. 


96  GOLIAH 

But  in  the  escape  of  the  German  Emperor  was  dis 
covered  a  great  significance.  The  scientists  of  the 
world  plucked  up  courage,  got  back  their  nerve. 
One  thing  was  conclusively  evident  —  Goliah's 
power  was  not  magic.  Law  still  reigned  in  the  uni 
verse.  Goliah's  power  had  limitations,  else  had 
the  German  Emperor  not  escaped  by  secretly  hiding 
in  a  steel  safe.  Many  learned  articles  on  the  sub 
ject  appeared  in  the  magazines. 

The  ten  scientists  arrived  back  from  Palgrave 
Island  on  July  6.  Heavy  platoons  of  police  pro 
tected  them  from  the  reporters.  No,  they  had  not 
seen  Goliah,  they  said  in  the  one  official  interview 
that  was  vouchsafed;  but  they  had  talked  with  him, 
and  they  had  seen  things.  They  were  not  permitted 
to  state  definitely  all  that  they  had  seen  and  heard, 
but  they  could  say  that  the  world  was  about  to  be 
revolutionized.  Goliah  was  in  the  possession  of  a 
tremendous  discovery  that  placed  all  the  world  at  his 
mercy,  and  it  was  a  good  thing  for  the  world  that 
Goliah  was  merciful.  The  ten  scientists  proceeded 
directly  to  Washington  on  a  special  train,  where,  for 
days,  they  were  closeted  with  the  heads  of  government, 
while  the  nation  hung  breathless  on  the  outcome. 


GOLIAH  97 

But  the  outcome  was  a  long  time  in  arriving. 
From  Washington  the  President  issued  commands 
to  the  masters  and  leading  figures  of  the  nation. 
Everything  was  secret.  Day  by  day  deputations 
of  bankers,  railway  lords,  captains  of  industry,  and 
Supreme  Court  justices  arrived;  and  when  they 
arrived  they  remained.  The  weeks  dragged  on,  and 
then,  on  August  25,  began  the  famous  issuance  of 
proclamations.  Congress  and  the  Senate  cooperated 
with  the  President  in  this,  while  the  Supreme  Court 
justices  gave  their  sanction  and  the  money  lords 
and  the  captains  of  industry  agreed.  War  was 
declared  upon  the  capitalist  masters  of  the  nation. 
Martial  law  was  declared  over  the  whole  United 
States.  The  supreme  power  was  vested  in  the 
President. 

In  one  day,  child-labor  in  the  whole  country  was 
abolished.  It  was  done  by  decree,  and  the  United 
States  was  prepared  with  its  army  to  enforce  its 
decrees.  In  the  same  day  all  women  factory  workers 
were  dismissed  to  their  homes,  and  all  the  sweat 
shops  were  closed.  "But  we  cannot  make  profits !" 
wailed  the  petty  capitalists.  "Fools!"  was  the 
retort  of  Goliah.  "As  if  the  meaning  of  life  were 


98  GOLIAH 

profits !  Give  up  your  businesses  and  your  profit- 
mongering."  "But  there  is  nobody  to  buy  our 
business!"  they  wailed.  "Buy  and  sell  —  is  that 
all  the  meaning  life  has  for  you?"  replied  Goliah. 
"You  have  nothing  to  sell.  Turn  over  your  little 
cut-throating,  anarchistic  businesses  to  the  govern 
ment  so  that  they  may  be  rationally  organized  and 
operated."  And  the  next  day,  by  decree,  the  gov 
ernment  began  taking  possession  of  all  factories, 
shops,  mines,  ships,  railroads,  and  producing  lands. 

The  nationalization  of  the  means  of  production 
and  distribution  went  on  apace.  Here  and  there 
were  sceptical  capitalists  of  moment.  They  were 
made  prisoners  and  haled  to  Palgrave  Island,  and 
when  they  returned  they  always  acquiesced  in  what 
the  government  was  doing.  A  little  later  the  journey 
to  Palgrave  Island  became  unnecessary.  When  ob 
jection  was  made,  the  reply  of  the  officials  was :  — 
"Goliah  has  spoken"  —  which  was  another  way  of 
saying,  "He  must  be  obeyed." 

The  captains  of  industry  became  heads  of  depart 
ments.  It  was  found  that  civil  engineers,  for  in 
stance,  worked  just  as  well  in  government  employ 
as,  before,  they  had  worked  in  private  employ.  It 


GOLIAH  99 

was  found  that  men  of  high  executive  ability  could 
not  violate  their  nature.  They  could  not  escape  exer 
cising  their  executive  ability,  any  more  than  a  crab 
could  escape  crawling  or  a  bird  could  escape  flying. 
And  so  it  was  that  all  the  splendid  force  of  the  men 
who  had  previously  worked  for  themselves  was  now 
put  to  work  for  the  good  of  society.  The  half- 
dozen  great  railway  chiefs  cooperated  in  the  organ 
izing  of  a  national  system  of  railways  that  was  amaz 
ingly  efficacious.  Never  again  was  there  such  a 
thing  as  a  car  shortage.  These  chiefs  were  not  the 
Wall  Street  railway  magnates,  but  they  were  the  men 
who  formerly  had  done  the  real  work  while  in  the 
employ  of  the  Wall  Street  magnates. 

Wall  Street  was  dead.  There  was  no  more  buying 
and  selling  and  speculating.  Nobody  had  anything 
to  buy  or  sell.  There  was  nothing  in  which  to  specu 
late.  "  Put  the  stock  gamblers  to  work,"  said  Goliah ; 
"give  those  that  are  young,  and  that  so  desire,  a 
chance  to  learn  useful  trades."  "Put  the  drummers, 
and  salesmen,  and  advertising  agents,  and  real  estate 
agents  to  work,"  said  Goliah;  and  by  hundreds  of 
thousands  the  erstwhile  useless  middlemen  and  para 
sites  went  into  useful  occupations.  The  four  hun- 


ioo  GOLIAH 

dred  thousand  idle  gentlemen  of  the  country  who 
had  lived  upon  incomes  were  likewise  put  to  work. 
Then  there  were  a  lot  of  helpless  men  in  high  places 
who  were  cleared  out,  the  remarkable  thing  about 
this  being  that  they  were  cleared  out  by  their  own 
fellows.  Of  this  class  were  the  professional  politi 
cians,  whose  wisdom  and  power  consisted  of  manipu 
lating  machine  politics  and  of  grafting.  There  was 
no  longer  any  graft.  Since  there  were  no  private 
interests  to  purchase  special  privileges,  no  bribes  were 
offered  to  legislators,  and  legislators  for  the  first  time 
legislated  for  the  people.  The  result  was  that  men 
who  were  efficient,  not  in  corruption,  but  in  direction, 
found  their  way  into  the  legislatures. 

With  this  rational  organization  of  society  amazing 
results  were  brought  about.  The  national  day's 
work  was  eight  hours,  and  yet  production  increased. 
In  spite  of  the  great  permanent  improvements  and 
of  the  immense  amount  of  energy  consumed  in 
systematizing  the  competitive  chaos  of  society,  pro 
duction  doubled  and  tripled  upon  itself.  The  stand 
ard  of  living  increased,  and  still  consumption  could 
not  keep  up  with  production.  The  maximum  work 
ing  age  was  decreased  to  fifty  years,  to  forty-nine 


GOLIAH  101 

years,  and  to  forty-eight  years.  The  minimum  work 
ing  age  went  up  from  sixteen  years  to  eighteen  years. 
The  eight-hour  day  became  a  seven-hour  day,  and 
in  a  few  months  the  national  working  day  was  re 
duced  to  five  hours. 

In  the  meantime  glimmerings  were  being  caught, 
not  of  the  identity  of  Goliah,  but  of  how  he  had 
worked  and  prepared  for  his  assuming  control  of 
the  world.  Little  things  leaked  out,  clews  were 
followed  up,  apparently  unrelated  things  were  pieced 
together.  Strange  stories  of  blacks  stolen  from  Africa 
were  remembered,  of  Chinese  and  Japanese  contract 
coolies  who  had  mysteriously  disappeared,  of  lonely 
South  Sea  Islands  raided  and  their  inhabitants  carried 
away;  stories  of  yachts  and  merchant  steamers, 
mysteriously  purchased,  that  had  disappeared  and 
the  descriptions  of  which  remotely  tallied  with  the 
crafts  that  had  carried  the  Orientals  and  Africans 
and  islanders  away.  Where  had  Goliah  got  the  sin 
ews  of  war  ?  was  the  question.  And  the  surmised 
answer  was:  By  exploiting  these  stolen  laborers. 
It  was  they  that  lived  in  the  exposed  village  on  Pal- 
grave  Island.  It  was  the  product  of  their  toil  that 
had  purchased  the  yachts  and  merchant  steamers 


102  GOLIAH 

and  enabled  Goliah's  agents  to  permeate  society 
and  carry  out  his  will.  And  what  was  the  product 
of  their  toil  that  had  given  Goliah  the  wealth  neces 
sary  to  realize  his  plane  ?  Commercial  radium, 
the  newspapers  proclaimed;  and  radiyte,  and  radio- 
sole,  and  argatium,  and  argyte,  and  the  mysterious 
golyte  (that  had  proved  so  valuable  in  metallurgy). 
These  were  the  new  compounds,  discovered  in  the 
first  decade  of  the  twentieth  century,  the  commercial 
and  scientific  use  of  which  had  become  so  enormous 
in  the  second  decade. 

The  line  of  fruit  boats  that  ran  from  Hawaii  to 
San  Francisco  was  declared  to  be  the  property  of 
Goliah.  This  was  a  surmise,  for  no  other  owner 
could  be  discovered,  and  the  agents  who  handled  the 
shipments  of  the  fruit  boats  were  only  agents.  Since 
no  one  else  owned  the  fruit  boats,  then  Goliah  must 
own  them.  The  point  of  which  is :  that  it  leaked 
out  that  the  major  portion  of  the  world's  supply  in 
these  precious  compounds  was  brought  to  San  Fran 
cisco  by  those  very  fruit  boats.  That  the  whole  chain 
of  surmise  was  correct  was  proved  in  later  years 
when  Goliah's  slaves  were  liberated  and  honorably 
pensioned  by  the  international  government  of  the 


GOLIAH  103 

world.  It  was  at  that  time  that  the  seal  of  secrecy 
was  lifted  from  the  lips  of  his  agents  and  higher 
emissaries,  and  those  that  chose  revealed  much  of 
the  mystery  of  Goliah's  organization  and  methods. 
His  destroying  angels,  however,  remained  forever 
dumb.  Who  the  men  were  who  went  forth  to  the 
high  places  and  killed  at  his  bidding  will  be  unknown 
to  the  end  of  time  —  for  kill  they  did,  by  means  of 
that  very  subtle  and  then-mysterious  force  that  Goliah 
had  discovered  and  named  "  Energon." 

But  at  that  time  Energon,  the  little  giant  that  was 
destined  to  do  the  work  of  the  world,  was  unknown 
and  undreamed  of.  Only  Goliah  knew,  and  he 
kept  his  secret  well.  Even  his  agents,  who  were 
armed  with  it,  and  who,  in  the  case  of  the  yacht 
Energon,  destroyed  a  mighty  fleet  of  war-ships  by 
exploding  their  magazines,  knew  not  what  the  subtle 
and  potent  force  was,  nor  how  it  was  manufactured. 
They  knew  only  one  of  its  many  uses,  and  in  that  one 
use  they  had  been  instructed  by  Goliah.  It  is  now 
well  known  that  radium,  and  radiyte,  and  radiosole, 
and  all  the  other  compounds,  were  by-products  of 
the  manufacture  of  Energon  by  Goliah  from  the  sun 
light;  but  at  that  time  nobody  knew  what  Energon 


io4  GOLIAH 

was,  and  Goliah  continued  to  awe  and  rule  the 
world. 

One  of  the  uses  of  Energon  was  in  wireless  teleg 
raphy.  It  was  by  its  means  that  Goliah  was  able  to 
communicate  with  his  agents  all  over  the  world.  At 
that  time  the  apparatus  required  by  an  agent  was  so 
clumsy  that  it  could  not  be  packed  in  anything  less 
than  a  fair-sized  steamer  trunk.  To-day,  thanks 
to  the  improvements  of  Hendsoll,  the  perfected  ap 
paratus  can  be  carried  in  a  coat  pocket. 

It  was  in  December,  1924,  that  Goliah  sent  out  his 
famous  "Christmas  Letter/'  part  of  the  text  of  which 
is  here  given :  — 

"So  far,  while  I  have  kept  the  rest  of  the  nations  from  each 
other's  throats,  I  have  devoted  myself  particularly  to  the  United 
States.  Now  I  have  not  given  to  the  people  of  the  United  States 
a  rational  social  organization.  What  I  have  done  has  been  to 
compel  them  to  make  that  organization  themselves.  There  is 
more  laughter  in  the  United  States  these  days,  and  there  is  more 
sense.  Food  and  shelter  are  no  longer  obtained  by  the  anarchistic 
methods  of  so-called  individualism,  but  are  now  well  nigh  auto 
matic.  And  the  beauty  of  it  is  that  the  people  of  the  United  States 
have  achieved  all  this  for  themselves.  I  did  not  achieve  it  for 
them.  I  repeat,  they  achieved  it  for  themselves.  All  that  I  did 
was  to  put  the  fear  of  death  in  the  hearts  of  the  few  that  sat  in 
the  high  places  and  obstructed  the  coming  of  rationality  and 


GOLIAH  105 

laughter.  The  fear  of  death  made  those  in  the  high  places  get  out 
of  the  way,  that  was  all,  and  gave  the  intelligence  of  man  a 
chance  to  realize  itself  socially. 

"In  the  year  that  is  to  come  I  shall  devote  myself  to  the  rest  of 
the  world.  I  shall  put  the  fear  of  death  in  the  hearts  of  all  that 
sit  in  the  high  places  in  all  the  nations.  And  they  will  do  as  they 
have  done  in  the  United  States  —  get  down  out  of  the  high  places 
and  give  the  intelligence  of  man  a  chance  for  social  rationality. 
All  the  nations  shall  tread  the  path  the  United  States  is  now  on. 

"And  when  all  the  nations  are  well  along  on  that  path,  I  shall 
have  something  else  for  them.  But  first  they  must  travel  that  path 
for  themselves.  They  must  demonstrate  that  the  intelligence  of 
mankind  to-day,  with  the  mechanical  energy  now  at  its  disposal, 
is  capable  of  organizing  society  so  that  food  and  shelter  be  made 
automatic,  labor  be  reduced  to  a  three-hour  day,  and  joy  and 
laughter  be  made  universal.  And  when  that  is  accomplished, 
not  by  me  but  by  the  intelligence  of  mankind,  then  I  shall  make 
a  present  to  the  world  of  a  new  mechanical  energy.  This  is  my 
discovery.  This  Energon  is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  the  cosmic 
energy  that  resides  in  the  solar  rays.  When  it  is  harnessed  by 
mankind  it  will  do  the  work  of  the  world.  There  will  be  no  more 
multitudes  of  miners  slaving  out  their  lives  in  the  bowels  of  the  earth, 
no  more  sooty  firemen  and  greasy  engineers.  All  may  dress  in 
white,  if  they  so  will.  The  work  of  life  will  have  become  play 
and  young  and  old  will  be  the  children  of  joy,  and  the  business  of 
living  will  become  joy;  and  they  will  compete,  one  with  another, 
in  achieving  ethical  concepts  and  spiritual  heights,  in  fashioning 
pictures  and  songs,  and  stories,  in  statecraft  and  beauty  craft, 
in  the  sweat  and  the  endeavor  of  the  wrestler  and  the  runner  and 


io6  GOLIAH 

the  player  of  games  —  all  will  compete,  not  for  sordid  coin  and 
base  material  reward,  but  for  the  joy  that  shall  be  theirs  in  the 
development  and  vigor  of  flesh  and  in  the  development  and  keenness 
of  spirit.  All  will  be  joy-smiths,  and  their  task  shall  be  to  beat  out 
laughter  from  the  ringing  anvil  of  life. 

"And  now  one  word  for  the  immediate  future.  On  New  Year's 
Day  all  nations  shall  disarm,  all  fortresses  and  war-ships  shall  be 
dismantled,  and  all  armies  shall  be  disbanded. 

"  GOLIAH." 

On  New  Year's  Day  all  the  world  disarmed. 
The  millions  of  soldiers  and  sailors  and  workmen  in 
the  standing  armies,  in  the  navies,  and  in  the  countless 
arsenals,  machine-shops,  and  factories  for  the  manu 
facture  of  war  machinery,  were  dismissed  to  their 
homes.  These  many  millions  of  men,  as  well  as 
their  costly  war  machinery,  had  hitherto  been  sup 
ported  on  the  back  of  labor.  They  now  went  into 
useful  occupations,  and  the  released  labor  giant 
heaved  a  mighty  sigh  of  relief.  The  policing  of  the 
world  was  left  to  the  peace  officers  and  was  purely 
social,  whereas  war  had  been  distinctly  anti-social. 

Ninety  per  cent  of  the  crimes  against  society  had 
been  crimes  against  private  property.  With  the 
passing  of  private  property,  at  least  in  the  means  of 
production,  and  with  the  organization  of  industry 


GOLIAH  107 

that  gave  every  man  a  chance,  the  crimes  against 
private  property  practically  ceased.  The  police 
forces  everywhere  were  reduced  repeatedly  and  again 
and  again.  Nearly  all  occasional  and  habitual 
criminals  ceased  voluntarily  from  their  depredations. 
There  was  no  longer  any  need  for  them  to  commit 
crime.  They  merely  changed  with  changing  con 
ditions.  A  smaller  number  of  criminals  was  put  into 
hospitals  and  cured.  And  the  remnant  of  the  hope 
lessly  criminal  and  degenerate  was  segregated. 
And  the  courts  in  all  countries  were  likewise  decreased 
in  number  again  and  again.  Ninety-five  per  cent 
of  all  civil  cases  had  been  squabbles  over  property, 
conflicts  of  property-rights,  lawsuits,  contests  of 
wills,  breaches  of  contract,  bankruptcies,  etc.  With 
the  passing  of  private  property,  this  ninety-five  per 
cent  of  the  cases  that  cluttered  the  courts  also  passed. 
The  courts  became  shadows,  attenuated  ghosts, 
rudimentary  vestiges  of  the  anarchistic  times  that 
had  preceded  the  coming  of  Goliah. 

The  year  1925  was  a  lively  year  in  the  world's 
history.  Goliah  ruled  the  world  with  a  strong  hand. 
Kings  and  emperors  journeyed  to  Palgrave  Island, 
saw  the  wonders  of  Energon,  and  went  away,  with 


io8  GOLIAH 

the  fear  of  death  in  their  hearts,  to  abdicate  thrones 
and  crowns  and  hereditary  licenses.  When  Goliah 
spoke  to  politicians  (so-called  "statesmen"),  they 
obeyed  ...  or  died.  He  dictated  universal  re 
forms,  dissolved  refractory  parliaments,  and  to  the 
great  conspiracy  that  was  formed  of  mutinous  money 
lords  and  captains  of  industry  he  sent  his  destroying 
angels.  "  The  time  is  past  for  fooling,"  he  told  them. 
"You  are  anachronisms.  You  stand  in  the  way  of 
humanity.  To  the  scrap-heap  with  you."  To  those 
that  protested,  and  they  were  many,  he  said:  "This 
is  no  time  for  logomachy.  You  can  argue  for  cen 
turies.  It  is  what  you  have  done  in  the  past.  I  have 
no  time  for  argument.  Get  out  of  the  way." 

With  the  exception  of  putting  a  stop  to  war,  and  of 
indicating  the  broad  general  plan,  Goliah  did  nothing. 
By  putting  the  fear  of  death  into  the  hearts  of  those 
that  sat  in  the  high  places  and  obstructed  progress, 
Goliah  made  the  opportunity  for  the  unshackled 
intelligence  of  the  best  social  thinkers  of  the  world 
to  exert  itself.  Goliah  left  all  the  multitudinous 
details  of  reconstruction  to  these  social  thinkers.  He 
wanted  them  to  prove  that  they  were  able  to  do  it, 
and  they  proved  it.  It  was  due  to  their  initiative 


GOLIAH  109 

that  the  white  plague  was  stamped  out  from  the 
world.  It  was  due  to  them,  and  in  spite  of  a  deal 
of  protesting  from  the  sentimentalists,  that  all  the 
extreme  hereditary  inefficients  were  segregated  and 
denied  marriage. 

Goliah  had  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the 
instituting  of  the  colleges  of  invention.  This  idea 
originated  practically  simultaneously  in  the  minds 
of  thousands  of  social  thinkers.  The  time  was  ripe 
for  the  realization  of  the  idea,  and  everywhere  arose 
the  splendid  institutions  of  invention.  For  the  first 
time  the  ingenuity  of  man  was  loosed  upon  the  prob 
lem  of  simplifying  life,  instead  of  upon  the  making 
of  money-earning  devices.  The  affairs  of  life,  such 
as  house-cleaning,  dish  and  window-washing,  dust- 
removing,  and  scrubbing  and  clothes-washing,  and 
all  the  endless  sordid  and  necessary  details,  were 
simplified  by  invention  until  they  became  automatic. 
We  of  to-day  cannot  realize  the  barbarously  filthy 
and  slavish  lives  of  those  that  lived  prior  to  1925. 

The  international  government  of  the  world  was 
another  idea  that  sprang  simultaneously  into  the 
minds  of  thousands.  The  successful  realization  of 
this  idea  was  a  surprise  to  many,  but  as  a  surprise 


i  io  GOLIAH 

it  was  nothing  to  that  received  by  the  mildly  protes- 
tant  sociologists  and  biologists  when  irrefutable  facts 
exploded  the  doctrine  of  Malthus.  With  leisure 
and  joy  in  the  world;  with  an  immensely  higher 
standard  of  living;  and  with  the  enormous  spacious 
ness  of  opportunity  for  recreation,  development,  and 
pursuit  of  beauty  and  nobility  and  all  the  higher 
attributes,  the  birth-rate  fell,  and  fell  astoundingly. 
People  ceased  breeding  like  cattle.  And  better,  than 
that,  it  was  immediately  noticeable  that  a  higher 
average  of  children  was  being  born.  The  doctrine 
of  Malthus  was  knocked  into  a  cocked  hat  —  or 
flung  to  the  scrap-heap,  as  Goliah  would  have  put  it. 
All  that  Goliah  had  predicted  that  the  intelligence 
of  mankind  could  accomplish  with  the  mechanical 
energy  at  its  disposal,  came  to  pass.  Human  dis 
satisfaction  practically  disappeared.  The  elderly 
people  were  the  great  grumblers ;  but  when  they  were 
honorably  pensioned  by  society,  as  they  passed  the 
age  limit  for  work,  the  great  majority  ceased  grum 
bling.  They  found  themselves  better  off  in  their  idle 
old  days  under  the  new  regime,  enjoying  vastly  more 
pleasures  and  comforts  than  they  had  in  their  busy 
and  toilsome  youth  under  the  old  regime.  The 


GOLIAH  in 

younger  generation  had  easily  adapted  itself  to  the 
changed  order,  and  the  very  young  had  never  known 
anything  else.  The  sum  of  human  happiness  had 
increased  enormously.  The  world  had  become  gay 
and  sane.  Even  the  old  fogies  of  professors  of  soci 
ology,  who  had  opposed  with  might  and  main  the  com 
ing  of  the  new  regime,  made  no  complaint.  They 
were  a  score  of  times  better  remunerated  than  in  the 
old  days,  and  they  were  not  worked  nearly  so  hard. 
Besides,  they  were  busy  revising  sociology  and  writ 
ing  new  text-books  on  the  subject.  Here  and  there, 
it  is  true,  there  were  atavisms,  men  who  yearned  for 
the  flesh-pots  and  cannibal-feasts  of  the  old  alleged 
"individualism,"  creatures  long  of  teeth  and  savage 
of  claw  who  wanted  to  prey  upon  their  fellow-men; 
but  they  were  looked  upon  as  diseased,  and  were 
treated  in  hospitals.  A  small  remnant,  however, 
proved  incurable,  and  was  confined  in  asylums  and 
denied  marriage.  Thus  there  was  no  progeny  to 
inherit  their  atavistic  tendencies. 

As  the  years  went  by,  Goliah  dropped  out  of  the 
running  of  the  world.  There  was  nothing  for  him 
to  run.  The  world  was  running  itself,  and  doing  it 
smoothly  and  beautifully.  In  1937,  Goliah  made  his 


GOLIAH 

long-promised  present  of  Energon  to  the  world.  He 
himself  had  devised  a  thousand  ways  in  which  the 
little  giant  should  do  the  work  of  the  world  —  all 
of  which  he  made  public  at  the  same  time.  But  in 
stantly  the  colleges  of  invention  seized  upon  Energon 
and  utilized  it  in  a  hundred  thousand  additional  ways. 
In  fact,  as  Goliah  confessed  in  his  letter  of  March, 
1938,  the  colleges  of  invention  cleared  up  several 
puzzling  features  of  Energon  that  had  baffled  him 
during  the  preceding  years.  With  the  introduction 
of  the  use  of  Energon  the  two-hour  work-day  was  cut 
down  almost  to  nothing.  As  Goliah  had  predicted, 
work  indeed  became  play.  And,  so  tremendous 
was  man's  productive  capacity,  due  to  Energon  and 
the  rational  social  utilization  of  it,  that  the  humblest 
citizen  enjoyed  leisure  and  time  and  opportunity  for 
an  immensely  greater  abundance  of  living  than  had 
the  most  favored  under  the  old  anarchistic  system. 

Nobody  had  ever  seen  Goliah,  and  all  peoples 
began  to  clamor  for  their  savior  to  appear.  While 
the  world  did  not  minimize  his  discovery  of  Energon, 
it  was  decided  that  greater  than  that  was  his  wide 
social  vision.  He  was  a  superman,  a  scientific  super 
man;  and  the  curiosity  of  the  world  to  see  him  had 


GOLIAH  113 

become  wellnigh  unbearable.  It  was  in  1941,  after 
much  hesitancy  on  his  part,  that  he  finally  emerged 
from  Palgrave  Island.  He  arrived  on  June  6  in 
San  Francisco,  and  for  the  first  time,  since  his  retire 
ment  to  Palgrave  Island,  the  world  looked  upon  his 
face.  And  the  world  was  disappointed.  Its  imagina 
tion  had  been  touched.  An  heroic  figure  had  been 
made  out  of  Goliah.  He  was  the  man,  or  the  demi 
god,  rather,  who  had  turned  the  planet  over.  The 
deeds  of  Alexander,  Caesar,  Genghis  Khan,  and 
Napoleon  were  as  the  play  of  babes  alongside  his 
colossal  achievements. 

And  ashore  in  San  Francisco  and  through  its 
streets  stepped  and  rode  a  little  old  man,  sixty-five 
years  of  age,  well  preserved,  with  a  pink-and-white 
complexion  and  a  bald  spot  on  his  head  the  size  of  an 
apple.  He  was  short-sighted  and  wore  spectacles. 
But  when  the  spectacles  were  removed,  his  were 
quizzical  blue  eyes  like  a  child's,  filled  with  mild 
wonder  at  the  world.  Also  his  eyes  had  a  way  of 
twinkling,  accompanied  by  a  screwing  up  of  the  face, 
as  if  he  laughed  at  the  huge  joke  he  had  played  upon 
the  world,  trapping  it,  in  spite  of  itself,  into  happiness 
and  laughter. 


GOLIAH 

For  a  scientific  superman  and  world  tyrant,  he  had 
remarkable  weaknesses.  He  loved  sweets,  and  was 
inordinately  fond  of  salted  almonds  and  salted  pecans, 
especially  of  the  latter.  He  always  carried  a  paper 
bag  of  them  in  his  pocket,  and  he  had  a  way  of  saying 
frequently  that  the  chemism  of  his  nature  demanded 
such  fare.  Perhaps  his  most  astonishing  failing  was 
cats.  He  had  an  ineradicable  aversion  to  that  do 
mestic  animal.  It  will  be  remembered  that  he 
fainted  dead  away  with  sudden  fright,  while  speaking 
in  Brotherhood  Palace,  when  the  janitor's  cat  walked 
out  upon  the  stage  and  brushed  against  his  legs. 

But  no  sooner  had  he  revealed  himself  to  the  world 
than  he  was  identified.  Old-time  friends  had  no 
difficulty  in  recognizing  him  as  Percival  Stultz,  the 
German-American  who,  in  1898,  had  worked  in 
the  Union  Iron  Works,  and  who,  for  two  years  at  that 
time,  had  been  secretary  of  Branch  369  of  the  In 
ternational  Brotherhood  of  Machinists.  It  was  in 
1901,  then  twenty-five  years  of  age,  that  he  had  taken 
special  scientific  courses  at  the  University  of  Cali 
fornia,  at  the  same  time  supporting  himself  by 
soliciting  what  was  then  known  as  "life  insurance." 
His  records  as  a  student  are  preserved  in  the  univer- 


GOLIAH  115 

sity  museum,  and  they  are  unenviable.  He  is  re 
membered  by  the  professors  he  sat  under  chiefly 
for  his  absent-mindedness.  Undoubtedly,  even  then, 
he  was  catching  glimpses  of  the  wide  visions  that 
later  were  to  be  his. 

His  naming  himself  "Goliah"  and  shrouding 
himself  in  mystery  was  his  little  joke,  he  later  ex 
plained.  As  Goliah,  or  any  other  thing  like  that,  he 
said,  he  was  able  to  touch  the  imagination  of  the  world 
and  turn  it  over;  but  as  Percival  Stultz,  wearing 
side-whiskers  and  spectacles,  and  weighing  one  hun 
dred  and  eighteen  pounds,  he  would  have  been 
unable  to  turn  over  a  pecan  —  "not  even  a  salted 
pecan." 

But  the  world  quickly  got  over  its  disappointment 
in  his  personal  appearance  and  antecedents.  It  knew 
him  and  revered  him  as  the  master-mind  of  the  ages ; 
and  it  loved  him  for  himself,  for  his  quizzical  short 
sighted  eyes  and  the  inimitable  way  in  which  he 
screwed  up  his  face  when  he  laughed;  it  loved  him 
for  his  simplicity  and  comradeship  and  warm 
humanness,  and  for  his  fondness  for  salted  pecans 
and  his  aversion  to  cats.  And  to-day,  in  the  wonder- 
city  of  Asgard,  rises  in  awful  beauty  that  monument 


ii6  GOLIAH 

to  him  that  dwarfs  the  pyramids  and  all  the  monstrous 
blood-stained  monuments  of  antiquity.  And  on  that 
monument,  as  all  know,  is  inscribed  in  imperish 
able  bronze  the  prophecy  and  the  fulfillment:  "ALL 

WILL  BE  JOY-SMITHS,  AND  THEIR  TASK  SHALL  BE  TO 
BEAT  OUT  LAUGHTER  FROM  THE  RINGING  ANVIL  OF 
LIFE." 

[EDITORIAL  NOTE  :  —  This  remarkable  production 
is  the  work  of  Harry  Beckwith,  a  student  in  the  Lowell 
High  School  of  San  Francisco,  and  it  is  here  repro 
duced  chiefly  because  of  the  youth  of  its  author.  Far 
be  it  from  our  policy  to  burden  our  readers  with  ancient 
history ;  and  when  it  is  known  that  Harry  Beckwith 
was  only  fifteen  when  the  foregoing  was  written,  our 
motive  will  be  understood.  "Gohab"  won  the  Pre 
mier  for  high  school  composition  in  2254,  and  last 
year  Harry  Beckwith  took  advantage  of  the  privilege 
earned,  by  electing  to  spend  six  months  in  Asgard. 
The  wealth  of  historical  detail,  the  atmosphere  of  the 
times,  and  the  mature  style  of  the  composition  are 
especially  noteworthy  in  one  so  young.] 


THE  GOLDEN  POPPY 


THE  GOLDEN   POPPY 

I  HAVE  a  poppy  field.  That  is,  by  the  grace 
of  God  and  the  good-nature  of  editors,  I  am 
enabled  to  place  each  month  divers  gold  pieces 
into  a  clerical  gentleman's  hands,  and  in  return  for 
said  gold  pieces  I  am  each  month  reinvested  with 
certain  proprietary  rights  in  a  poppy  field.  This 
field  blazes  on  the  rim  of  the  Piedmont  Hills.  Be 
neath  lies  all  the  world.  In  the  distance,  across  the 
silver  sweep  of  bay,  San  Francisco  smokes  on  her 
many  hills  like  a  second  Rome.  Not  far  away, 
Mount  Tamalpais  thrusts  a  rugged  shoulder  into 
the  sky;  and  midway  between  is  the  Golden  Gate, 
where  sea  mists  love  to  linger.  From  the  poppy 
field  we  often  see  the  shimmering  blue  of  the  Pacific 
beyond,  and  the  busy  ships  that  go  forever  out 
and  in. 

"We  shall  have  great  joy  in  our  poppy  field," 
said  Bess.  "Yes,"  said  I;  "how  the  poor  city  folk 
will  envy  when  they  come  to  see  us,  and  how  we 

119 


120  THE   GOLDEN   POPPY 

will  make  all  well  again  when  we  send  them  off 
with  great  golden  armfuls!" 

"But  those  things  will  have  to  come  down,"  I 
added,  pointing  to  numerous  obtrusive  notices  (relics 
of  the  last  tenant)  displayed  conspicuously  along  the 
boundaries,  and  bearing,  each  and  all,  this  legend  :  — 

"Private  Grounds.     No  Trespassing" 

"Why  should  we  refuse  the  poor  city  folk  a 
ramble  over  our  field,  because,  forsooth,  they  have 
not  the  advantage  of  our  acquaintance  ?" 

"How  I  abhor  such  things,"  said  Bess;  "the 
arrogant  symbols  of  power." 

"They  disgrace  human  nature,"  said  I. 

"They  shame  the  generous  landscape,"  she  said, 
"and  they  are  abominable." 

"Piggish  !"   quoth  I,  hotly.     "Down  with  them  !" 

We  looked  forward  to  the  coming  of  the  poppies, 
did  Bess  and  I,  looked  forward  as  only  creatures  of 
the  city  may  look  who  have  been  long  denied.  I 
have  forgotten  to  mention  the  existence  of  a  house 
above  the  poppy  field,  a  squat  and  wandering  bunga 
low  in  which  we  had  elected  to  forsake  town  tradi 
tions  and  live  in  fresher  and  more  vigorous  ways. 


THE   GOLDEN   POPPY  121 

The  first  poppies  came,  orange-yellow  and  golden  in 
the  standing  grain,  and  we  went  about  gleefully,  as 
though  drunken  with  their  wine,  and  told  each  other 
that  the  poppies  were  there.  We  laughed  at  unex 
pected  moments,  in  the  midst  of  silences,  and  at 
times  grew  ashamed  and  stole  forth  secretly  to  gaze 
upon  our  treasury.  But  when  the  great  wave  of 
poppy-flame  finally  spilled  itself  down  the  field,  we 
shouted  aloud,  and  danced,  and  clapped  our  hands, 
freely  and  frankly  mad. 

And  then  came  the  Goths.  My  face  was  in  a 
lather,  the  time  of  the  first  invasion,  and  I  suspended 
my  razor  in  mid-air  to  gaze  out  on  my  beloved  field. 
At  the  far  end  I  saw  a  little  girl  and  a  little  boy, 
their  arms  filled  with  yellow  spoil.  Ah,  thought  I, 
an  unwonted  benevolence  burgeoning,  what  a  delight 
to  me  is  their  delight !  It  is  sweet  that  children 
should  pick  poppies  in  my  field.  All  summer  shall 
they  pick  poppies  in  my  field.  But  they  must  be 
little  children,  I  added  as  an  afterthought,  and  they 
must  pick  from  the  lower  end  —  this  last  prompted 
by  a  glance  at  the  great  golden  fellows  nodding  in 
the  wheat  beneath  my  window.  Then  the  razor 
descended.  Shaving  was  always  an  absorbing  task, 


122  THE   GOLDEN   POPPY 

and  I  did  not  glance  out  of  the  window  again  until 
the  operation  was  completed.  And  then  I  was  be 
wildered.  Surely  this  was  not  my  poppy  field.  No 
—  and  yes,  for  there  were  the  tall  pines  clustering 
austerely  together  on  one  side,  the  magnolia  tree 
burdened  with  bloom,  and  the  Japanese  quinces 
splashing  the  driveway  hedge  with  blood.  Yes,  it 
was  the  field,  but  no  wave  of  poppy-flame  spilled 
down  it,  nor  did  the  great  golden  fellows  nod  in  the 
wheat  beneath  my  window.  I  rushed  into  a  jacket 
and  out  of  the  house.  In  the  far  distance  were  dis 
appearing  two  huge  balls  of  color,  orange  and  yellow, 
for  all  the  world  like  perambulating  poppies  of 
cyclopean  breed. 

>(  Johnny,"  said  I  to  the  nine-year-old  son  of  my 
sister,  "Johnny,  whenever  little  girls  come  into  our 
field  to  pick  poppies,  you  must  go  down  to  them, 
and  in  a  very  quiet  and  gentlemanly  manner,  tell 
them  it  is  not  allowed." 

Warm  days  came,  and  the  sun  drew  another 
blaze  from  the  free-bosomed  earth.  Whereupon  a 
neighbor's  little  girl,  at  the  behest  of  her  mother, 
duly  craved  and  received  permission  from  Bess  to 
gather  a  few  poppies  for  decorative  purposes.  But 


THE  GOLDEN   POPPY  123 

of  this  I  was  uninformed,  and  when  I  descried  her 
in  the  midst  of  the  field  I  waved  my  arms  like  a 
semaphore  against  the  sky. 

"  Little  girl ! "   called  I.     "  Little  girl ! " 

The  little  girl's  legs  blurred  the  landscape  as  she 
fled,  and  in  high  elation  I  sought  Bess  to  tell  of  the 
potency  of  my  voice.  Nobly  she  came  to  the  rescue, 
departing  forthwith  on  an  expedition  of  conciliation 
and  explanation  to  the  little  girl's  mother.  But  to 
this  day  the  little  girl  seeks  cover  at  sight  of  me, 
and  I  know  the  mother  will  never  be  as  cordial  as  she 
would  otherwise  have  been. 

Came  dark,  overcast  days,  stiff,  driving  winds  and 
pelting  rains,  day  on  day,  without  end,  and  the  city 
folk  cowered  in  their  dwelling-places  like  flood- 
beset  rats;  and  like  rats,  half-drowned  and  gasping, 
when  the  weather  cleared  they  crawled  out  and  up 
the  green  Piedmont  slopes  to  bask  in  the  blessed 
sunshine.  And  they  invaded  my  field  in  swarms 
and  droves,  crushing  the  sweet  wheat  into  the  earth 
and  with  lustful  hands  ripping  the  poppies  out  by 
the  roots. 

"I  shall  put  up  the  warnings  against  trespassing," 
I  said. 


i24  THE  GOLDEN  POPPY 

"Yes,"  said  Bess,  with  a  sigh.  "I'm  afraid  it  is 
necessary." 

The  day  was  yet  young  when  she  sighed  again: 
"I'm  afraid,  O  Man,  that  your  signs  are  of  no  avail. 
People  have  forgotten  how  to  read,  these  days." 

I  went  out  on  the  porch.  A  city  nymph,  in  cool 
summer  gown  and  picture  hat,  paused  before  one 
of  my  newly  reared  warnings  and  read  it  through 
with  care.  Profound  deliberation  characterized  her 
movements.  She  was  statuesquely  tall,  but  with  a 
toss  of  the  head  and  a  flirt  of  the  skirt  she  dropped 
on  hands  and  knees,  crawled  under  the  fence,  and 
came  to  her  feet  on  the  inside  with  poppies  in  both 
her  hands.  I  walked  down  the  drive  and  talked 
ethically  to  her,  and  she  went  away.  Then  I  put 
up  more  signs. 

At  one  time,  years  ago,  these  hills  were  carpeted 
with  poppies.  As  between  the  destructive  forces 
and  the  will  "to  live,"  the  poppies  maintained  an 
equilibrium  with  their  environment.  But  the  city 
folk  constituted  a  new  and  terrible  destructive  force, 
the  equilibrium  was  overthrown,  and  the  poppies 
wellnigh  perished.  Since  the  city  folk  plucked 
those  with  the  longest  stems  and  biggest  bowls, 


THE  GOLDEN   POPPY  125 

and  since  it  is  the  law  of  kind  to  procreate  kind,  the 
long-stemmed,  big-bowled  poppies  failed  to  go  to 
seed,  and  a  stunted,  short-stemmed  variety  remained 
to  the  hills.  And  not  only  was  it  stunted  and  short- 
stemmed,  but  sparsely  distributed  as  well.  Each 
day  and  every  day,  for  years  and  years,  the  city  folk 
swarmed  over  the  Piedmont  Hills,  and  only  here 
and  there  did  the  genius  of  the  race  survive  in  the 
form  of  miserable  little  flowers,  close-clinging  and 
quick-blooming,  like  children  of  the  slums  dragged 
hastily  and  precariously  through  youth  to  a  shrivelled 
and  futile  maturity. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  poppies  had  prospered  in 
my  field ;  and  not  only  had  they  been  sheltered  from 
the  barbarians,  but  also  from  the  birds.  Long  ago 
the  field  was  sown  in  wheat,  which  went  to  seed  un- 
harvested  each  year,  and  in  the  cool  depths  of  which 
the  poppy  seeds  were  hidden  from  the  keen-eyed 
songsters.  And,  further,  climbing  after  the  sun 
through  the  wheat  stalks,  the  poppies  grew  taller 
and  taller  and  more  royal  even  than  the  primordial 
ones  of  the  open. 

So  the  city  folk,  gazing  from  the  bare  hills  to  my 
blazing,  burning  field,  were  sorely  tempted,  and,  it 


i26  THE   GOLDEN   POPPY 

must  be  told,  as  sorely  fell.  But  no  sorer  was  their 
fall  than  that  of  my  beloved  poppies.  Where  the 
grain  holds  the  dew  and  takes  the  bite  from  the  sun 
the  soil  is  moist,  and  in  such  soil  it  is  easier  to  pull 
the  poppies  out  by  the  roots  than  to  break  the  stalk. 
Now  the  city  folk,  like  other  folk,  are  inclined  to 
move  along  the  line  of  least  resistance,  and  for  each 
flower  they  gathered,  there  were  also  gathered  many 
crisp-rolled  buds  and  with  them  all  the  possibilities 
and  future  beauties  of  the  plant  for  all  time  to 
come. 

One  of  the  city  folk,  a  middle-aged  gentleman, 
with  white  hands  and  shifty  eyes,  especially  made 
life  interesting  for  me.  We  called  him  the  "Re 
peater,"  what  of  his  ways.  When  from  the  porch 
we  implored  him  to  desist,  he  was  wont  slowly  and 
casually  to  direct  his  steps  toward  the  fence,  simu 
lating  finely  the  actions  of  a  man  who  had  not 
heard,  but  whose  walk,  instead,  had  terminated  of 
itself  or  of  his  own  volition.  To  heighten  this  effect, 
now  and  again,  still  casually  and  carelessly,  he  would 
stoop  and  pluck  another  poppy.  Thus  did  he  de 
ceitfully  save  himself  the  indignity  of  being  put  out, 
and  rob  us  of  the  satisfaction  of  putting  him  out, 


THE   GOLDEN   POPPY  127 

but  he  came,  and  he  came  often,  each  time  getting 
away  with  an  able-bodied  man's  share  of  plunder. 

It  is  not  good  to  be  of  the  city  folk.  Of  this  I  am 
convinced.  There  is  something  in  the  mode  of  life 
that  breeds  an  alarming  condition  of  blindness  and 
deafness,  or  so  it  seems  with  the  city  folk  that  come 
to  my  poppy  field.  Of  the  many  to  whom  I  have 
talked  ethically  not  one  has  been  found  who  ever 
saw  the  warnings  so  conspicuously  displayed,  while 
of  those  called  out  to  from  the  porch,  possibly  one  in 
fifty  has  heard.  Also,  I  have  discovered  that  the  re 
lation  of  city  folk  to  country  flowers  is  quite  analo 
gous  to  that  of  a  starving  man  to  food.  No  more 
than  the  starving  man  realizes  that  five  pounds  of 
meat  is  not  so  good  as  an  ounce,  do  they  realize  that 
five  hundred  poppies  crushed  and  bunched  are  less 
beautiful  than  two  or  three  in  a  free  cluster,  where 
the  green  leaves  and  golden  bowls  may  expand  to 
their  full  loveliness. 

Less  forgivable  than  the  unaesthetic  are  the  mer 
cenary.  Hordes  of  young  rascals  plunder  me  and 
rob  the  future  that  they  may  stand  on  street  corners 
and  retail  "California  poppies,  only  five  cents  a 
bunch!"  In  spite  of  my  precautions  some  of  them 


iz8  THE   GOLDEN   POPPY 

made  a  dollar  a  day  out  of  my  field.  One  horde  do 
I  remember  with  keen  regret.  Reconnoitring  for 
a  possible  dog,  they  applied  at  the  kitchen  door  for 
"a  drink  of  water,  please."  While  they  drank  they 
were  besought  not  to  pick  any  flowers.  They 
nodded,  wiped  their  mouths,  and  proceeded  to  take 
themselves  off  by  the  side  of  the  bungalow.  They 
smote  the  poppy  field  beneath  my  windows,  spread 
out  fan-shaped  six  wide,  picking  with  both  hands, 
and  ripped  a  swath  of  destruction  through  the  very 
heart  of  the  field.  No  cyclone  travelled  faster  or 
destroyed  more  completely.  I  shouted  after  them, 
but  they  sped  on  the  wings  of  the  wind,  great  regal 
poppies,  broken-stalked  and  mangled,  trailing  after 
them  or  cluttering  their  wake  —  the  most  high 
handed  act  of  piracy,  I  am  confident,  ever  committed 
off  the  high  seas. 

One  day  I  went  a-fishing,  and  on  that  day  a 
woman  entered  the  field.  Appeals  and  remon 
strances  from  the  porch  having  no  effect  upon 
her,  Bess  despatched  a  little  girl  to  beg  of  her  to 
pick  no  more  poppies.  The  woman  calmly  went 
on  picking.  Then  Bess  herself  went  down  through 
the  heat  of  the  day.  But  the  woman  went  on  pick- 


THE  GOLDEN   POPPY  129 

ing,  and  while  she  picked  she  discussed  property 
and  proprietary  rights,  denying  Bess's  sovereignty 
until  deeds  and  documents  should  be  produced  in 
proof  thereof.  And  all  the  time  she  went  on  pick 
ing,  never  once  overlooking  her  hand.  She  was  a 
large  woman,  belligerent  of  aspect,  and  Bess  was 
only  a  woman  and  not  prone  to  fisticuffs.  So  the 
invader  picked  until  she  could  pick  no  more,  said 
"Good-day,"  and  sailed  majestically  away. 

"  People  have  really  grown  worse  in  the  last  several 
years,  I  think,"  said  Bess  to  me  in  a  tired  sort  of 
voice  that  night,  as  we  sat  in  the  library  after 
dinner. 

Next  day  I  was  inclined  to  agree  with  her. 
"There's  a  woman  and  a  little  girl  heading  straight 
for  the  poppies,"  said  May,  a  maid  about  the  bunga 
low.  I  went  out  on  the  porch  and  waited  their 
advent.  They  plunged  through  the  pine  trees  and 
into  the  fields,  and  as  the  roots  of  the  first  poppies 
were  pulled  I  called  to  them.  They  were  about  a 
hundred  feet  away.  The  woman  and  the  little  girl 
turned  to  the  sound  of  my  voice  and  looked  at  me. 
"Please  do  not  pick  the  poppies,"  I  pleaded.  They 
pondered  this  for  a  minute;  then  the  woman  said 


130  THE   GOLDEN   POPPY 

something  in  an  undertone  to  the  little  girl,  and 
both  backs  jack-knifed  as  the  slaughter  recom 
menced.  I  shouted,  but  they  had  become  suddenly 
deaf.  I  screamed,  and  so  fiercely  that  the  little  girl 
wavered  dubiously.  And  while  the  woman  went  on 
picking  I  could  hear  her  in  low  tones  heartening  the 
little  girl. 

I  recollected  a  siren  whistle  with  which  I  was 
wont  to  summon  Johnny,  the  son  of  my  sister.  It 
was  a  fearsome  thing,  of  a  kind  to  wake  the  dead, 
and  I  blew  and  blew,  but  the  jack-knifed  backs  never 
unclasped.  I  do  not  mind  with  men,  but  I  have 
never  particularly  favored  physical  encounters  with 
women;  yet  this  woman,  who  encouraged  a  little 
girl  in  iniquity,  tempted  me. 

I  went  into  the  bungalow  and  fetched  my  rifle. 
Flourishing  it  in  a  sanguinary  manner  and  scowling 
fearsomely,  I  charged  upon  the  invaders.  The  little 
girl  fled,  screaming,  to  the  shelter  of  the  pines,  but 
the  woman  calmly  went  on  picking.  She  took  not 
the  least  notice.  I  had  expected  her  to  run  at  sight 
of  me,  and  it  was  embarrassing.  There  was  I, 
charging  down  the  field  like  a  wild  bull  upon  a 
woman  who  would  not  get  out  of  the  way.  I  could 


THE  GOLDEN  POPPY  131 

only  slow  down,  supremely  conscious  of  how  ridicu 
lous  it  all  was.  At  a  distance  of  ten  feet  she 
straightened  up  and  deigned  to  look  at  me.  I  came 
to  a  halt  and  blushed  to  the  roots  of  my  hair.  Per 
haps  I  really  did  frighten  her  (I  sometimes  try  to  per 
suade  myself  that  this  is  so),  or  perhaps  she  took 
pity  on  me;  but,  at  any  rate,  she  stalked  out  of  my 
field  with  great  composure,  nay,  majesty,  her  arms 
brimming  with  orange  and  gold. 

Nevertheless,  thenceforward  I  saved  my  lungs  and 
flourished  my  rifle.  Also,  I  made  fresh  generaliza 
tions.  To  commit  robbery  women  take  advantage 
of  their  sex.  Men  have  more  respect  for  property 
than  women.  Men  are  less  insistent  in  crime  than 
women.  And  women  are  less  afraid  of  guns  than 
men.  Likewise,  we  conquer  the  earth  in  hazard 
and  battle  by  the  virtues  of  our  mothers.  We  are 
a  race  of  land-robbers  and  sea-robbers,  we  Anglo- 
Saxons,  and  small  wonder,  when  we  suckle  at  the 
breasts  of  a  breed  of  women  such  as  maraud  my 
poppy  field. 

Still  the  pillage  went  on.  Sirens  and  gun-flourish- 
ings  were  without  avail.  The  city  folk  were  great 
of  heart  and  undismayed,  and  I  noted  the  habit  of 


I32  THE  GOLDEN  POPPY 

"repeating"  was  becoming  general.  What  booted 
it  how  often  they  were  driven  forth  if  each  time 
they  were  permitted  to  carry  away  their  ill-gotten 
plunder  ?  When  one  has  turned  the  same  person 
away  twice  and  thrice  an  emotion  arises  somewhat 
akin  to  homicide.  And  when  one  has  once  be 
come  conscious  of  this  sanguinary  feeling  his  whole 
destiny  seems  to  grip  hold  of  him  and  drag  him 
into  the  abyss.  More  than  once  I  found  myself 
unconsciously  pulling  the  rifle  into  position  to  get  a 
sight  on  the  miserable  trespassers.  In  my  sleep  I 
slew  them  in  manifold  ways  and  threw  their  car 
casses  into  the  reservoir.  Each  day  the  temptation 
to  shoot  them  in  the  legs  became  more  luring,  and 
every  day  I  felt  my  fate  calling  to  me  imperiously. 
Visions  of  the  gallows  rose  up  before  me,  and  with 
the  hemp  about  my  neck  I  saw  stretched  out  the 
pitiless  future  of  my  children,  dark  with  disgrace 
and  shame.  I  became  afraid  of  myself,  and  Bess 
went  about  with  anxious  face,  privily  beseeching  my 
friends  to  entice  me  into  taking  a  vacation.  Then, 
and  at  the  last  gasp,  came  the  thought  that  saved 
me :  Why  not  confiscate  ?  If  their  forays  were  boot 
less,  in  the  nature  of  things  their  forays  would  cease. 


THE  GOLDEN  POPPY  133 

The  first  to  enter  my  field  thereafter  was  a  man. 
I  was  waiting  for  him  —  And,  oh  joy !  it  was  the 
"Repeater"  himself,  smugly  complacent  with  knowl 
edge  of  past  success.  I  dropped  the  rifle  negligently 
across  the  hollow  of  my  arm  and  went  down  to  him. 

"I  am  sorry  to  trouble  you  for  those  poppies,"  I 
said  in  my  oiliest  tones;  "but  really,  you  know,  I 
must  have  them." 

He  regarded  me  speechlessly.  It  must  have  made 
a  great  picture.  It  surely  was  dramatic.  With  the 
rifle  across  my  arm  and  my  suave  request  still  ring 
ing  in  my  ears,  I  felt  like  Black  Bart,  and  Jesse 
James,  and  Jack  Shepard,  and  Robin  Hood,  and 
whole  generations  of  highwaymen. 

"Come,  come,"  I  said,  a  little  sharply  and  in 
what  I  imagined  was  the  true  fashion;  "I  am  sorry 
to  inconvenience  you,  believe  me,  but  I  must  have 
those  poppies." 

I  absently  shifted  the  gun  and  smiled.  That 
fetched  him.  Without  a  word  he  passed  them  over 
and  turned  his  toes  toward  the  fence,  but  no  longer 
casual  and  careless  was  his  carnage,  nor  did  he 
stoop  to  pick  the  occasional  poppy  by  the  way. 
That  was  the  last  of  the  "Repeater."  I  could  see 


i34  THE   GOLDEN   POPPY 

by  his  eyes  that  he  did  not  like  me,  and  his  back 
reproached  me  all  the  way  down  the  field  and  out 
of  sight. 

From  that  day  the  bungalow  has  been  flooded 
with  poppies.  Every  vase  and  earthen  jar  is  filled 
with  them.  They  blaze  on  every  mantel  and  run 
riot  through  all  the  rooms.  I  present  them  to  my 
friends  in  huge  bunches,  and  still  the  kind  city  folk 
come  and  gather  more  for  me.  "Sit  down  for  a 
moment,"  I  say  to  the  departing  guest.  And 
there  we  sit  in  the  shade  of  the  porch  while  aspiring 
city  creatures  pluck  my  poppies  and  sweat  under 
the  brazen  sun.  And  when  their  arms  are  suffi 
ciently  weighted  with  my  yellow  glories,  I  go  down 
with  the  rifle  over  my  arm  and  disburden  them. 
Thus  have  I  become  convinced  that  every  situation 
has  its  compensations. 

Confiscation  was  successful,  so  far  as  it  went; 
but  I  had  forgotten  one  thing;  namely,  the  vast 
number  of  the  city  folk.  Though  the  old  trans 
gressors  came  no  more,  new  ones  arrived  every  day, 
and  I  found  myself  confronted  with  the  titanic  task 
of  educating  a  whole  cityful  to  the  inexpediency  of 
raiding  my  poppy  field.  During  the  process  of  dis- 


THE   GOLDEN   POPPY  135 

burdening  them  I  was  accustomed  to  explaining  my 
side  of  the  case,  but  I  soon  gave  this  over.  It  was  a 
waste  of  breath.  They  could  not  understand.  To 
one  lady,  who  insinuated  that  I  was  miserly,  I 
said : 

"My  dear  madam,  no  hardship  is  worked  upon 
you.  Had  I  not  been  parsimonious  yesterday  and 
the  day  before,  these  poppies  would  have  been  picked 
by  the  city  hordes  of  that  day  and  the  day  before,  and 
your  eyes,  which  to-day  have  discovered  this  field, 
would  have  beheld  no  poppies  at  all.  The  poppies 
you  may  not  pick  to-day  are  the  poppies  I  did  not 
permit  to  be  picked  yesterday  and  the  day  before. 
Therefore,  believe  me,  you  are  denied  nothing." 

"But  the  poppies  are  here  to-day,"  she  said,  glar 
ing  carnivorously  upon  their  glow  and  splendor. 

"I  will  pay  you  for  them,"  said  a  gentleman,  at 
another  time.  (I  had  just  relieved  him  of  an  arm 
ful.)  I  felt  a  sudden  shame,  I  know  not  why,  unless 
it  be  that  his  words  had  just  made  clear  to  me  that 
a  monetary  as  well  as  an  aesthetic  value  was  attached 
to  my  flowers.  The  apparent  sordidness  of  my  posi 
tion  overwhelmed  me,  and  I  said  weakly:  "I  do  not 
sell  my  poppies.  You  may  have  what  you  have 


136  THE  GOLDEN   POPPY 

picked."  But  before  the  week  was  out  I  confronted 
the  same  gentleman  again.  "I  will  pay  you  for 
them,"  he  said.  "Yes,"  I  said,  "you  may  pay  me 
for  them.  Twenty  dollars,  please."  He  gasped, 
looked  at  me  searchingly,  gasped  again,  and  silently 
and  sadly  put  the  poppies  down.  But  it  remained, 
as  usual,  for  a  woman  to  attain  the  sheerest  pitch  of 
audacity.  When  I  declined  payment  and  demanded 
my  plucked  beauties,  she  refused  to  give  them  up. 
"I  picked  these  poppies,"  she  said,  "and  my  time 
is  worth  money.  When  you  have  paid  me  for  my 
time  you  may  have  them."  Her  cheeks  flamed  re 
bellion,  and  her  face,  withal  a  pretty  one,  was  set 
and  determined.  Now,  I  was  a  man  of  the  hill 
tribes,  and  she  a  mere  woman  of  the  city  folk,  and 
though  it  is  not  my  inclination  to  enter  into  details, 
it  is  my  pleasure  to  state  that  that  bunch  of  poppies 
subsequently  glorified  the  bungalow  and  that  the 
woman  departed  to  the  city  unpaid.  Anyway,  they 
were  my  poppies. 

"They  are  God's  poppies,"  said  the  Radiant 
Young  Radical,  democratically  shocked  at  sight  of 
me  turning  city  folk  out  of  my  field.  And  for  two 
weeks  she  hated  me  with  a  deathless  hatred.  I 


THE   GOLDEN   POPPY  137 

sought  her  out  and  explained.  I  explained  at 
length.  I  told  the  story  of  the  poppy  as  Maeterlink 
has  told  the  life  of  the  bee.  I  treated  the  question 
biologically,  psychologically,  and  sociologically.  I 
discussed  it  ethically  and  aesthetically.  I  grew  warm 
over  it,  and  impassioned;  and  when  I  had  done,  she 
professed  conversion,  but  in  my  heart  of  hearts  I 
knew  it  to  be  compassion. 

I  fled  to  other  friends  for  consolation.  I  retold 
the  story  of  the  poppy.  They  did  not  appear  su 
premely  interested.  I  grew  excited.  They  were 
surprised  and  pained.  They  looked  at  me  curiously. 
"It  ill-befits  your  dignity  to  squabble  over  poppies," 
they  said.  "It  is  unbecoming." 

I  fled  away  to  yet  other  friends.  I  sought  vindi 
cation.  The  thing  had  become  vital,  and  I  needs 
must  put  myself  right.  I  felt  called  upon  to  ex 
plain,  though  well  knowing  that  he  who  explains  is 
lost.  I  told  the  story  of  the  poppy  over  again.  I 
went  into  the  minutest  details.  I  added  to  it,  and 
expanded.  I  talked  myself  hoarse,  and  when  I 
could  talk  no  more  they  looked  bored.  Also,  they 
said  insipid  things,  and  soothful  things,  and  things 
concerning  other  things,  and  not  at  all  to  the  point. 


138  THE   GOLDEN   POPPY 

I  was  consumed  with  anger,  and  there  and  then  I 
renounced  them  all. 

At  the  bungalow  I  lie  in  wait  for  chance  visitors. 
Craftily  I  broach  the  subject,  watching  their  faces 
closely  the  while  to  detect  first  signs  of  disapproba 
tion,  whereupon  I  empty  long-stored  vials  of  wrath 
upon  their  heads.  I  wrangle  for  hours  with  whom 
soever  does  not  say  I  am  right.  I  am  become  like 
Guy  de  Maupassant's  old  man  who  picked  up  a 
piece  of  string.  I  am  incessantly  explaining,  and 
nobody  will  understand.  I  have  become  more 
brusque  in  my  treatment  of  the  predatory  city  folk. 
No  longer  do  I  take  delight  in  their  disburdenment, 
for  it  has  become  an  onerous  duty,  a  wearisome  and 
distasteful  task.  My  friends  look  askance  and  mur 
mur  pityingly  on  the  side  when  we  meet  in  the  city. 
They  rarely  come  to  see  me  now.  They  are  afraid. 
I  am  an  embittered  and  disappointed  man,  and  all 
the  light  seems  to  have  gone  out  of  my  life  and  into 
my  blazing  field.  So  one  pays  for  things. 

PIEDMONT,  CALIFORNIA, 
April,  1902. 


THE   SHRINKAGE   OF   THE   PLANET 


THE  SHRINKAGE  OF  THE  PLANET 

WHAT  a  tremendous  affair  it  was,  the  world 
of  Homer,  with  its  indeterminate  bound 
aries,  vast  regions,  and  immeasurable  dis 
tances.  The  Mediterranean  and  the  Euxine  were 
illimitable  stretches  of  ocean  waste  over  which  years 
could  be  spent  in  endless  wandering.  On  their 
mysterious  shores  were  the  improbable  homes  of  im 
possible  peoples.  The  Great  Sea,  the  Broad  Sea, 
the  Boundless  Sea;  the  Ethiopians,  "dwelling  far 
away,  the  most  distant  of  men,"  and  the  Cim 
merians,  "covered  with  darkness  and  cloud,"  where 
"baleful  night  is  spread  over  timid  mortals."  Phoe 
nicia  was  a  sore  journey,  Egypt  simply  unattainable, 
while  the  Pillars  of  Hercules  marked  the  extreme 
edge  of  the  universe.  Ulysses  was  nine  days  in  sail 
ing  from  Ismarus,  the  city  of  the  Ciconians,  to  the 
country  of  the  Lotus-eaters  —  a  period  of  time  which 
to-day  would  breed  anxiety  in  the  hearts  of  the 
underwriters  should  it  be  occupied  by  the  slowest 

141 


142    THE  SHRINKAGE  OF   THE   PLANET 

tramp  steamer  in  traversing  the  Mediterranean  and 
Black  seas  from  Gibraltar  to  Sebastopol. 

Homer's  world,  restricted  to  less  than  a  drummer's 
circuit,  was  nevertheless  immense,  surrounded  by  a 
thin  veneer  of  universe  —  the  Stream  of  Ocean. 
But  how  it  has  shrunk !  To-day,  precisely  charted, 
weighed,  and  measured,  a  thousand  times  larger 
than  the  world  of  Homer,  it  is  become  a  tiny  speck, 
gyrating  to  immutable  law  through  a  universe  the 
bounds  of  which  have  been  pushed  incalculably 
back.  The  light  of  Algol  shines  upon  it  —  a  light 
which  travels  at  one  hundred  and  ninety  thousand 
miles  per  second,  yet  requires  forty-seven  years  to 
reach  its  destination.  And  the  denizens  of  this 
puny  ball  have  come  to  know  that  Algol  possesses 
an  invisible  companion,  three  and  a  quarter  mill 
ions  of  miles  away,  and  that  the  twain  move  in 
their  respective  orbits  at  rates  of  fifty-five  and 
twenty-six  miles  per  second.  They  also  know  that 
beyond  it  are  great  chasms  of  space,  innumerable 
worlds,  and  vast  star  systems. 

While  much  of  the  shrinkage  to  which  the  planet 
has  been  subjected  is  due  to  the  increased  knowl 
edge  of  mathematics  and  physics,  an  equal,  if  not 


THE   SHRINKAGE   OF   THE   PLANET     143 

greater,  portion  may  be  ascribed  to  the  perfection  of 
the  means  of  locomotion  and  communication.  The 
enlargement  of  stellar  space,  demonstrating  with 
stunning  force  the  insignificance  of  the  earth,  has 
been  negative  in  its  effect;  but  the  quickening  of 
travel  and  intercourse,  by  making  the  earth's  parts 
accessible  and  knitting  them  together,  has  been 
positive. 

The  advantage  of  the  animal  over  the  vegetable 
kingdom  is  obvious.  The  cabbage,  should  its  en 
vironment  tend  to  become  worse,  must  live  it  out, 
or  die;  the  rabbit  may  move  on  in  quest  of  a  better. 
But,  after  all,  the  swift-footed  creatures  are  circum 
scribed  in  their  wanderings.  The  first  large  river 
almost  inevitably  bars  their  way,  and  certainly  the 
first  salt  sea  becomes  an  impassable  obstacle.  Better 
locomotion  may  be  classed  as  one  of  the  prime  aims 
of  the  old  natural  selection;  for  in  that  primordial 
day  the  race  was  to  the  swift  as  surely  as  the  battle 
to  the  strong.  But  man,  already  preeminent  in  the 
common  domain  because  of  other  faculties,  was  not 
content  with  the  one  form  of  locomotion  afforded 
by  his  lower  limbs.  He  swam  in  the  sea,  and,  still 
better,  becoming  aware  of  the  buoyant  virtues  of 


144    THE  SHRINKAGE  OF  THE  PLANET 

wood,  learned  to  navigate  its  surface.  Likewise, 
from  among  the  land  animals  he  chose  the  more 
likely  to  bear  him  and  his  burdens.  The  next  step 
was  the  domestication  of  these  useful  aids.  Here, 
in  its  organic  significance,  natural  selection  ceased 
to  concern  itself  with  locomotion.  Man  had  dis 
played  his  impatience  at  her  tedious  methods  and 
his  own  superiority  in  the  hastening  of  affairs. 
Thenceforth  he  must  depend  upon  himself,  and 
faster-swimming  or  faster-running  men  ceased  to  be 
bred.  The  one,  half-amphibian,  breasting  the  water 
with  muscular  arms,  could  not  hope  to  overtake 
or  escape  an  enemy  who  propelled  a  fire-hollowed 
tree  trunk  by  means  of  a  wooden  paddle;  nor  could 
the  other,  trusting  to  his  own  nimbleness,  compete 
with  a  foe  who  careered  wildly  across  the  plain  on 
the  back  of  a  half-broken  stallion. 

So,  in  that  dim  day,  man  took  upon  himself  the 
task  of  increasing  his  dominion  over  space  and 
time,  and  right  nobly  has  he  acquitted  himself.  Be 
cause  of  it  he  became  a  road  builder  and  a  bridge 
builder;  likewise,  he  wove  clumsy  sails  of  rush  and 
matting.  At  a  very  remote  period  he  must  also 
have  recognized  that  force  moves  along  the  line  of 


THE  SHRINKAGE  OF  THE  PLANET     145 

least  resistance,  and  in  virtue  thereof,  placed  upon 
his  craft  rude  keels  which  enabled  him  to  beat  to 
windward  in  a  seaway.  As  he  excelled  in  these 
humble  arts,  just  so  did  he  add  to  his  power  over 
his  less  progressive  fellows  and  lay  the  foundations 
for  the  first  glimmering  civilizations  —  crude  they 
were  beyond  conception,  sporadic  and  ephemeral, 
but  each  formed  a  necessary  part  of  the  ground 
work  upon  which  was  to  rise  the  mighty  civilization 
of  our  latter-day  world. 

Divorced  from  the  general  history  of  man's  up 
ward  climb,  it  would  seem  incredible  that  so  long  a 
time  should  elapse  between  the  moment  of  his  first 
improvements  over  nature  in  the  matter  of  loco 
motion  and  that  of  the  radical  changes  he  was  ulti 
mately  to  compass.  The  principles  which  were  his 
before  history  was,  were  his,  neither  more  nor  less, 
even  to  the  present  century.  He  utilized  improved 
applications,  but  the  principles  of  themselves  were 
ever  the  same,  whether  in  the  war  chariots  of  Achilles 
and  Pharaoh  or  the  mail-coach  and  diligence  of  the 
European  traveller,  the  cavalry  of  the  Huns  or  of 
Prince  Rupert,  the  triremes  and  galleys  of  Greece 
and  Rome  or  the  East  Indiamen  and  clipper  ships 


146     THE   SHRINKAGE   OF   THE   PLANET 

of  the  last  century.  But  when  the  moment  came  to 
alter  the  methods  of  travel,  the  change  was  so  sweep 
ing  that  it  may  be  safely  classed  as  a  revolution. 
Though  the  discovery  of  steam  attaches  to  the 
honor  of  the  last  century,  the  potency  of  the  new 
power  was  not  felt  till  the  beginning  of  this.  By 
1800  small  steamers  were  being  used  for  coasting 
purposes  in  England;  1830  witnessed  the  opening 
of  the  Liverpool  and  Manchester  Railway;  while  it 
was  not  until  1838  that  the  Atlantic  was  first  crossed 
by  the  steamships  Great  Western  and  Sirius.  In 
1869  the  East  was  made  next-door  neighbor  to  the 
West.  Over  almost  the  same  ground  where  had 
toiled  the  caravans  of  a  thousand  generations,  the 
Suez  Canal  was  dug.  Clive,  during  his  first  trip, 
was  a  year  and  a  half  en  route  from  England  to 
India;  were  he  alive  to-day  he  could  journey  to 
Calcutta  in  twenty-two  days.  After  reading  De 
Quincey's  hyperbolical  description  of  the  English 
mail-coach,  one  cannot  down  the  desire  to  place 
that  remarkable  man  on  the  pilot  of  the  White  Mail 
or  of  the  Twentieth  Century. 

But  this  tremendous  change  in  the  means  of  loco 
motion  meant  far  more  than  the  mere  rapid  transit 


THE   SHRINKAGE   OF   THE   PLANET     147 

of  men  from  place  to  place.  Until  then,  though  its 
influence  and  worth  cannot  be  overestimated,  com 
merce  had  eked  out  a  precarious  and  costly  existence. 
The  fortuitous  played  too  large  a  part  in  the  trade 
of  men.  The  mischances  by  land  and  sea,  the  mis 
takes  and  delays,  were  adverse  elements  of  no  mean 
proportions.  But  improved  locomotion  meant  im 
proved  carrying,  and  commerce  received  an  impetus 
as  remarkable  as  it  was  unexpected.  In  his  fondest 
fancies  James  Watt  could  not  have  foreseen  even 
the  approximate  result  of  his  invention,  the  Her 
cules  which  was  to  spring  from  the  puny  child  of  his 
brain  and  hands.  An  illuminating  spectacle,  were 
it  possible,  would  be  afforded  by  summoning  him 
from  among  the  Shades  to  a  place  in  the  engine- 
room  of  an  ocean  greyhound.  The  humblest  trim 
mer  would  treat  him  with  the  indulgence  of  a  child; 
while  an  oiler,  a  greasy  nimbus  about  his  head  and 
in  his  hand,  as  sceptre,  a  long-snouted  can,  would 
indeed  appear  to  him  a  demigod  and  ruler  of  forces 
beyond  his  ken. 

It  has  ever  been  the  world's  dictum  that  empire 
and  commerce  go  hand  in  hand.  In  the  past  the 
one  was  impossible  without  the  other.  Rome 


i48     THE   SHRINKAGE   OF   THE   PLANET 

gathered  to  herself  the  wealth  of  the  Mediterranean 
nations,  and  it  was  only  by  an  unwise  distribution  of 
it  that  she  became  emasculated  and  lost  both  power 
and  trade.  With  a  just  system  of  economics  it  is 
highly  probable  that  for  centuries  she  could  have 
held  back  the  welling  tide  of  the  Germanic  peoples. 
When  upon  her  ruins  rose  the  institutions  of  the 
conquering  Teutons,  commerce  slipped  ,away,  and 
with  it  empire.  In  the  present,  empire  and  com 
merce  have  become  interdependent.  Such  wonders 
has  the  industrial  revolution  wrought  in  a  few  swift 
decades,  and  so  great  has  been  the  shrinkage  of  the 
planet,  that  the  industrial  nations  have  long  since 
felt  the  imperative  demand  for  foreign  markets. 
The  favored  portions  of  the  earth  are  occupied. 
From  their  seats  in  the  temperate  zones  the  militant 
commercial  nations  proceed  to  the  exploitation  of 
the  tropics,  and  for  the  possession  of  these  they  rush 
to  war  hot-footed.  Like  wolves  at  the  end  of  a 
gorge,  they  wrangle  over  the  fragments.  There 
are  no  more  planets,  no  more  fragments,  and  they 
are  yet  hungry.  There  are  no  longer  Cimmerians 
and  Ethiopians,  in  wide-stretching  lands,  awaiting 
them.  On  either  hand  they  confront  the  naked 


THE  SHRINKAGE  OF  THE   PLANET     149 

poles,  and  they  recoil  from  unnavigable  space  to  an 
intenser  struggle  among  themselves.  And  all  the 
while  the  planet  shrinks  beneath  their  grasp. 

Of  this  struggle  one  thing  may  be  safely  predi 
cated;  a  commercial  power  must  be  a  sea  power. 
Upon  the  control  of  the  sea  depends  the  control  of 
trade.  Carthage  threatened  Rome  till  she  lost  her 
navy;  and  then  for  thirteen  days  the  smoke  of  her 
burning  rose  to  the  skies,  and  the  ground  was  ploughed 
and  sown  with  salt  on  the  site  of  her  most  splendid 
edifices.  The  cities  of  Italy  were  the  world's  mer 
chants  till  new  trade  routes  were  discovered  and  the 
dominion  of  the  sea  passed  on  to  the  west  and  fell 
into  other  hands.  Spain  and  Portugal,  inaugurating 
an  era  of  maritime  discovery,  divided  the  new  world 
between  them,  but  gave  way  before  a  breed  of  sea- 
rovers,  who,  after  many  generations  of  attachment 
to  the  soil,  had  returned  to  their  ancient  element. 
With  the  destruction  of  her  Armada  Spain's  colossal 
dream  of  colonial  empire  passed  away.  Against  the 
new  power  Holland  strove  in  vain,  and  when  France 
acknowledged  the  superiority  of  the  Briton  upon  the 
sea,  she  at  the  same  time  relinquished  her  designs 
upon  the  world.  Hampered  by  her  feeble  navy, 


150    THE  SHRINKAGE  OF  THE   PLANET 

her  contest  for  supremacy  upon  the  land  was  her 
last  effort,  and  with  the  passing  of  Napoleon  she 
retired  within  herself  to  struggle  with  herself  as  best 
she  might.  For  fifty  years  England  held  undisputed 
sway  upon  the  sea,  controlled  markets,  and  domi 
neered  trade,  laying,  during  that  period,  the  founda 
tions  of  her  empire.  Since  then  other  naval  powers 
have  arisen,  their  attitudes  bearing  significantly  upon 
the  future;  for  they  have  learned  that  the  mastery 
of  the  world  belongs  to  the  masters  of  the  sea. 

That  many  of  the  phases  of  this  world  shrinkage 
are  pathetic,  goes  without  question.  There  is  much 
to  condemn  in  the  rise  of  the  economic  over  the 
imaginative  spirit,  much  for  which  the  energetic 
Philistine  can  never  atone.  Perhaps  the  deepest 
pathos  of  all  may  be  found  in  the  spectacle  of  John 
Ruskin  weeping  at  the  profanation  of  the  world  by 
the  vandalism  of  the  age.  Steam  launches  violate 
the  sanctity  of  the  Venetian  canals;  where  Xerxes 
bridged  the  Hellespont  ply  the  filthy  funnels  of 
our  modern  shipping;  electric  cars  run  in  the 
shadow  of  the  pyramids;  and  it  was  only  the  other 
day  that  Lord  Kitchener  was  in  a  railroad  wreck 
near  the  site  of  ancient  Luxor.  But  there  is  always 


THE  SHRINKAGE  OF  THE   PLANET     151 

the  other  side.  If  the  economic  man  has  defiled 
temples  and  despoiled  nature,  he  has  also  preserved. 
He  has  policed  the  world  and  parked  it,  reduced 
the  dangers  of  life  and  limb,  made  the  tenure  of 
existence  less  precarious,  and  rendered  a  general  re 
lapse  of  society  impossible.  There  can  never  again 
be  an  intellectual  holocaust,  such  as  the  burning 
of  the  Alexandrian  library.  Civilizations  may  wax 
and  wane,  but  the  totality  of  knowledge  cannot  de 
crease.  With  the  possible  exception  of  a  few  trade 
secrets,  arts  and  sciences  may  be  discarded,  but 
they  can  never  be  lost.  And  these  things  must 
remain  true  until  the  end  of  man's  time  upon  the 
earth. 

Up  to  yesterday  communication  for  any  distance 
beyond  the  sound  of  the  human  voice  or  the  sight 
of  the  human  eye  was  bound  up  with  locomotion. 
A  letter  presupposed  a  carrier.  The  messenger 
started  with  the  message,  and  he  could  not  but  avail 
himself  of  the  prevailing  modes  of  travel.  If  the 
voyage  to  Australia  required  four  months,  four 
months  were  required  for  communication;  by  no 
known  means  could  this  time  be  lessened.  But  with 
the  advent  of  the  telegraph  and  telephone  communi- 


152    THE   SHRINKAGE  OF  THE   PLANET 

cation  and  locomotion  were  divorced.  In  a  few 
hours,  at  most,  there  could  be  performed  what  by 
the  old  way  would  have  required  months.  In  1837 
the  needle  telegraph  was  invented,  and  nine  years 
later  the  Electric  Telegraph  Company  was  formed 
for  the  purpose  of  bringing  it  into  general  use. 
Government  postal  systems  also  came  into  being, 
later  to  consolidate  into  an  international  union  and 
to  group  the  nations  of  the  earth  into  a  local  neigh 
borhood.  The  effects  of  all  this  are  obvious,  and 
no  fitter  illustration  may  be  presented  than  the  fact 
that  to-day,  in  the  matter  of  communication,  the 
Klondike  is  virtually  nearer  to  Boston  than  was 
Bunker  Hill  in  the  time  of  Warren. 

A  contemporaneous  and  remarkable  shrinkage  of 
a  vast  stretch  of  territory  may  be  instanced  in  the 
Northland.  From  its  rise  at  Lake  Linderman  the 
Yukon  runs  twenty-five  hundred  miles  to  Bering 
Sea,  traversing  an  almost  unknown  region,  the  re 
mote  recesses  of  which  had  never  felt  the  moccasined 
foot  of  the  pathfinder.  At  occasional  intervals  men 
wallowed  into  its  dismal  fastnesses,  or  emerged 
gaunt  and  famine-worn.  But  in  the  fall  of  1896  a 
great  gold  strike  was  made  —  greater  than  any  since 


THE  SHRINKAGE  OF  THE   PLANET     153 

the  days  of  California  and  Australia;  yet,  so  rude 
were  the  means  of  communication,  nearly  a  year 
elapsed  before  the  news  of  it  reached  the  eager  ear 
of  the  world.  Passionate  pilgrims  disembarked 
their  outfits  at  Dyea.  Over  the  terrible  Chilcoot 
Pass  the  trail  led  to  the  lakes,  thirty  miles  away. 
Carnage  was  yet  in  its  most  primitive  stage,  the 
road  builder  and  bridge  builder  unheard  of.  With 
heavy  packs  upon  their  backs  men  plunged  waist- 
deep  into  hideous  quagmires,  bridged  mountain  tor 
rents  by  felling  trees  across  them,  toiled  against  the 
precipitous  slopes  of  the  ice-worn  mountains,  and 
crossed  the  dizzy  faces  of  innumerable  glaciers. 
When,  after  incalculable  toil  they  reached  the  lakes, 
they  went  into  the  woods,  sawed  pine  trees  into 
lumber  by  hand,  and  built  it  into  boats.  In  these, 
overloaded,  unseaworthy,  they  battled  down  the  long 
chain  of  lakes.  Within  the  memory  of  the  writer 
there  lingers  the  picture  of  a  sheltered  nook  on  the 
shores  of  Lake  Le  Barge,  in  which  half  a  thousand 
gold  seekers  lay  storm-bound.  Day  after  day  they 
struggled  against  the  seas  in  the  teeth  of  a  northerly 
gale,  and  night  after  night  returned  to  their  camps, 
repulsed  but  not  disheartened.  At  the  rapids  they 


1 54    THE  SHRINKAGE  OF  THE   PLANET 

ran  their  boats  through,  hit  or  miss,  and  after 
infinite  toil  and  hardship,  on  the  breast  of  a  jarring 
ice  flood,  arrived  at  the  Klondike.  From  the  beach 
at  Dyea  to  the  eddy  below  the  Barracks  at  Dawson, 
they  had  paid  for  their  temerity  the  tax  of  human 
life  demanded  by  the  elements.  A  year  later,  so 
great  had  the  country  shrunk,  the  tourist,  on  disem 
barking  from  the  ocean  steamship,  took  his  seat  in 
a  modern  railway  coach.  A  few  hours  later,  at  Lake 
Bennet,  he  stepped  aboard  a  commodious  river 
steamer.  At  the  rapids  he  rode  around  on  a  tram 
way  to  take  passage  on  another  steamer  below. 
And  in  a  few  hours  more  he  was  in  Dawson,  without 
having  once  soiled  the  lustre  of  his  civilized  foot-gear. 
Did  he  wish  to  communicate  with  the  outside  world, 
he  strolled  into  the  telegraph  office.  A  few  short 
months  before  he  would  have  written  a  letter  and 
deemed  himself  favored  above  mortals  were  it  de 
livered  within  the  year. 

From  man's  drawing  the  world  closer  and  closer 
together,  his  own  affairs  and  institutions  have  con 
solidated.  Concentration  may  typify  the  chief  move 
ment  of  the  age  —  concentration,  classification, 
order;  the  reduction  of  friction  between  the  parts 


THE  SHRINKAGE  OF  THE  PLANET    155 

of  the  social  organism.  The  urban  tendency  of  the 
rural  populations  led  to  terrible  congestion  in  the 
great  cities.  There  was  stifling  and  impure  air,  and 
lo,  rapid  transit  at  once  attacked  the  evil.  Every 
great  city  has  become  but  the  nucleus  of  a  greater 
city  which  surrounds  it;  the  one  the  seat  of  business, 
the  other  the  seat  of  domestic  happiness.  Between 
the  two,  night  and  morning,  by  electric  road,  steam 
railway,  and  bicycle  path,  ebbs  and  flows  the  middle- 
class  population.  And  in  the  same  direction  lies 
the  remedy  for  the  tenement  evil.  In  the  cleansing 
country  air  the  slum  cannot  exist.  Improvement  in 
roadbeds  and  the  means  of  locomotion,  a  tremor  of 
altruism,  a  little  legislation,  and  the  city  by  day  will 
sleep  in  the  country  by  night. 

What  a  play-ball  has  this  planet  of  ours  become ! 
Steam  has  made  its  parts  accessible  and  drawn 
them  closer  together.  The  telegraph  annihilates 
space  and  time.  Each  morning  every  part  knows 
what  every  other  part  is  thinking,  contemplating,  or 
doing.  A  discovery  in  a  German  laboratory  is 
being  demonstrated  in  San  Francisco  within  twenty- 
four  hours.  A  book  written  in  South  Africa  is 
published  by  simultaneous  copyright  in  every  Eng- 


156    THE  SHRINKAGE  OF  THE   PLANET 

lish-speaking  country,  and  on  the  following  day  is 
in  the  hands  of  the  translators.  The  death  of  an 
obscure  missionary  in  China,  or  of  a  whiskey  smug 
gler  in  the  South  Seas,  is  served  up,  the  world  over, 
with  the  morning  toast.  The  wheat  output  of 
Argentine  or  the  gold  of  Klondike  is  known  wherever 
men  meet  and  trade.  Shrinkage  or  centralization 
has  been  such  that  the  humblest  clerk  in  any  me 
tropolis  may  place  his  hand  on  the  pulse  of  the 
world.  And  because  of  all  this,  everywhere  is  grow 
ing  order  and  organization.  The  church,  the  state; 
men,  women,  and  children;  the  criminal  and  the 
law,  the  honest  man  and  the  thief,  industry  and  com 
merce,  .capital  and  labor,  the  trades  and  the  profes 
sions,  the  arts  and  the  sciences,  —  all  are  organizing 
for  pleasure,  profit,  policy,  or  intellectual  pursuit. 
They  have  come  to  know  the  strength  of  num 
bers,  solidly  phalanxed  and  driving  onward  with 
singleness  of  purpose.  These  purposes  may  be 
various  and  many,  but  one  and  all,  ever  discovering 
new  mutual  interests  and  objects,  obeying  a  law 
which  is  beyond  them,  these  petty  aggregations  draw 
closer  together,  forming  greater  aggregations  and  con 
geries  of  aggregations.  And  these,  in  turn,  vaguely 


THE   SHRINKAGE   OF  THE   PLANET     157 

merging  each  into  each,  present  glimmering  adum 
brations  of  the  coming  human  solidarity  which  shall 
be  man's  crowning  glory. 

OAKLAND,  CALIFORNIA, 
January,  1900. 


THE  HOUSE   BEAUTIFUL 


THE  HOUSE   BEAUTIFUL 

SPEAKING  of  homes,  I  am  building  one  now, 
and  I  venture  to  assert  that  very  few  homes 
have  received  more  serious  thought  in  the  plan 
ning.  Let  me  tell  you  about  it.  In  the  first  place, 
there  will  be  no  grounds  whatever,  no  fences,  lawns, 
nor  flowers.  Roughly,  the  dimensions  will  be  forty- 
five  feet  by  fifteen.  That  is,  it  will  be  fifteen  feet  wide 
at  its  widest —  and,  if  you  will  pardon  the  bull,  it  will 
be  narrower  than  it  is  wide. 

The  details  must  submit  to  the  general  plan  of 
economy.  There  will  be  no  veranda,  no  porch 
entrances,  no  grand  staircases.  I'm  ashamed  to 
say  how  steep  the  stairways  are  going  to  be.  The 
bedrooms  will  be  seven  by  seven,  and  one  will  be 
even  smaller.  A  bedroom  is  only  good  to  sleep  in, 
anyway.  There  will  be  no  hallway,  thank  goodness. 
Rooms  were  made  to  go  through.  Why  a  separate 
passage  for  traffic  ? 

The  bath-room  will  be  a  trifle  larger  than  the  size 
of  the  smallest  bath-tub  —  it  won't  require  so  much 

M  161 


1 62  THE  HOUSE   BEAUTIFUL 

work  to  keep  in  order.  The  kitchen  won't  be  very 
much  larger,  but  this  will  make  it  easy  for  the  cook. 
In  place  of  a  drawing-room,  there  will  be  a  large 
living-room  —  fourteen  by  six.  The  walls  of  this  room 
will  be  covered  with  books,  and  it  can  serve  as  library 
and  smoking-room  as  well.  Then,  the  floor-space  not 
being  occupied,  we  shall  use  the  room  as  a  dining- 
room.  Incidentally,  such  a  room  not  being  used 
after  bedtime,  the  cook  and  the  second  boy  can  sleep 
in  it.  One  thing  that  I  am  temperamentally  opposed 
to  is  waste,  and  why  should  all  this  splendid  room  be 
wasted  at  night  when  we  do  not  occupy  it  ? 

My  ideas  are  cramped,  you  say  ?  —  Oh,  I  forgot 
to  tell  you  that  this  home  I  am  describing  is  to 
be  a  floating  home,  and  that  my  wife  and  I  are  to 
journey  around  the  world  in  it  for  the  matter  of 
seven  years  or  more.  I  forgot  also  to  state  that 
there  will  be  an  engine-room  in  it  for  a  seventy-horse 
power  engine,  a  dynamo,  storage  batteries,  etc. ; 
tanks  for  water  to  last  long  weeks  at  sea ;  space  for 
fifteen  hundred  gallons  of  gasoline,  fire  extinguishers, 
and  life-preservers;  and  a  great  store-room  for  food, 
spare  sails,  anchors,  hawsers,  tackles,  and  a  thousand 
and  one  other  things. 


THE  HOUSE   BEAUTIFUL  163 

Since  I  have  not  yet  built  my  land  house,  I  haven't 
got  beyond  a  few  general  ideas,  and  in  presenting 
them  I  feel  as  cocksure  as  the  unmarried  woman  who 
writes  the  column  in  the  Sunday  supplement  on  how 
to  rear  children.  My  first  idea  about  a  house  is 
that  it  should  be  built  to  live  in.  Throughout  the 
house,  in  all  the  building  of  it,  this  should  be  the 
paramount  idea.  It  must  be  granted  that  this  idea 
is  lost  sight  of  by  countless  persons  who  build  houses 
apparently  for  every  purpose  under  the  sun  except  to 
live  in  them. 

Perhaps  it  is  because  of  the  practical  life  I  have 
lived  that  I  worship  utility  and  have  come  to  believe 
that  utility  and  beauty  should  be  one,  and  that  there 
is  no  utility  that  need  not  be  beautiful.  What  finer 
beauty  than  strength  —  whether  it  be  airy  steel,  or 
massive  masonry,  or  a  woman's  hand  ?  A  plain 
black  leather  strap  is  beautiful.  It  is  all  strength 
and  all  utility,  and  it  is  beautiful.  It  efficiently 
performs  work  in  the  world,  and  it  is  good  to 
look  upon.  Perhaps  it  is  because  it  is  useful  that 
it  is  beautiful.  I  do  not  know.  I  sometimes  wonder. 

A  boat  on  the  sea  is  beautiful.  Yet  it  is  not  built 
for  beauty.  Every  graceful  line  of  it  is  a  utility,  is 


1 64  THE   HOUSE   BEAUTIFUL 

designed  to  perform  work.  It  is  created  for  the 
express  purpose  of  dividing  the  water  in  front  of  it, 
of  gliding  over  the  water  beneath  it,  of  leaving  the 
water  behind  it  —  and  all  with  the  least  possible 
wastage  of  stress  and  friction.  It  is  not  created  for 
the  purpose  of  filling  the  eye  with  beauty.  It  is 
created  for  the  purpose  of  moving  through  the  sea  and 
over  the  sea  with  the  smallest  resistance  and  the 
greatest  stability;  yet,  somehow,  it  does  fill  the  eye 
with  its  beauty.  And  in  so  far  as  a  boat  fails  in  its 
purpose,  by  that  much  does  it  diminish  in  beauty. 

I  am  still  a  long  way  from  the  house  I  have  in  my 
mind  some  day  to  build,  yet  I  have  arrived  somewhere. 
I  have  discovered,  to  my  own  satisfaction  at  any  rate, 
that  beauty  and  utility  should  be  one.  In  applying 
this  general  idea  to  the  building  of  a  house,  it  may 
be  stated  in  another  and  better  way;  namely,  con 
struction  and  decoration  must  be  one.  This  idea 
is  more  important  than  the  building  of  the  house, 
for  without  the  idea  the  house  so  built  is  certain  to  be 
an  insult  to  intelligence  and  beauty-love. 

I  bought  a  house  in  a  hurry  in  the  city  of  Oakland 
some  time  ago.  I  do  not  live  in  it.  I  sleep  in  it  half 
a  dozen  times  a  year.  I  do  not  love  the  house.  I  am 


THE   HOUSE    BEAUTIFUL  165 

hurt  every  time  I  look  at  it.  No  drunken  rowdy  or 
political  enemy  can  insult  me  so  deeply  as  that  house 
does.  Let  me  tell  you  why.  It  is  an  ordinary  two- 
story  frame  house.  After  it  was  built,  the  criminal 
that  constructed  it  nailed  on,  at  the  corners,  perpen 
dicularly,  some  two-inch  fluted  planks.  These  planks 
rise  the  height  of  the  house,  and  to  a  drunken  man 
have  the  appearance  of  fluted  columns.  To  com 
plete  the  illusion  in  the  eyes  of  the  drunken  man,  the 
planks  are  topped  with  wooden  Ionic  capitals,  nailed 
on,  and  in,  I  may  say,  bas-relief. 

When  I  analyze  the  irritation  these  fluted  planks 
cause  in  me,  I  find  the  reason  in  the  fact  that  the  first 
rule  for  building  a  house  has  been  violated.  These 
decorative  planks  are  no  part  of  the  construction. 
They  have  no  use,  no  work  to  perform.  They  are 
plastered  gawds  that  tell  lies  that  nobody  believes. 
A  column  is  made  for  the  purpose  of  supporting 
weight;  this  is  its  use.  A  column,  when  it  is  a  utility, 
is  beautiful.  The  fluted  wooden  columns  nailed 
on  outside  my  house  are  not  utilities.  They  are  not 
beautiful.  They  are  nightmares.  They  not  only 
support  no  weight,  but  they  themselves  are  a  weight 
that  drags  upon  the  supports  of  the  house.  Some 


i66  THE  HOUSE   BEAUTIFUL 

day,  when  I  get  time,  one  of  two  things  will  surely 
happen.  Either  I'll  go  forth  and  murder  the  man 
who  perpetrated  the  atrocity,  or  else  I'll  take  an  axe 
and  chop  off  the  lying,  fluted  planks. 

A  thing  must  be  true,  or  it  is  not  beautiful,  any 
more  than  a  painted  wanton  is  beautiful,  any  more 
than  a  sky-scraper  is  beautiful  that  is  intrinsically  and 
structurally  light  and  that  has  a  false  massiveness  of 
pillars  plastered  on  outside.  The  true  sky-scraper 
is  beautiful  —  and  this  is  the  reluctant  admission  of 
a  man  who  dislikes  humanity-festering  cities.  The 
true  sky-scraper  is  beautiful,  and  it  is  beautiful  in  so 
far  as  it  is  true.  In  its  construction  it  is  light  and  airy, 
therefore  in  its  appearance  it  must  be  light  and  airy. 
It  dare  not,  if  it  wishes  to  be  beautiful,  lay  claim  to 
what  it  is  not.  And  it  should  not  bulk  on  the  city- 
scape  like  Leviathan;  it  should  rise  and  soar,  light 
and  airy  and  fairylike. 

Man  is  an  ethical  animal  —  or,  at  least,  he  is  more 
ethical  than  any  other  animal.  Wherefore  he  has 
certain  yearnings  for  honesty.  And  in  no  way  can 
these  yearnings  be  more  thoroughly  satisfied  than  by 
the  honesty  of  the  house  in  which  he  lives  and  passes 
the  greater  part  of  his  life. 


THE  HOUSE   BEAUTIFUL  167 

They  that  dwelt  in  San  Francisco  were  dishonest. 
They  lied  and  cheated  in  their  business  life  (like  the 
dwellers  in  all  cities),  and  because  they  lied  and 
cheated  in  their  business  life,  they  lied  and  cheated  in 
the  buildings  they  erected.  Upon  the  tops  of  the 
simple,  severe  walls  of  their  buildings  they  plastered 
huge  projecting  cornices.  These  cornices  were  not 
part  of  the  construction.  They  made  believe  to  be 
part  of  the  construction,  and  they  were  lies.  The 
earth  wrinkled  its  back  for  twenty-eight  seconds, 
and  the  lying  cornices  crashed  down  as  all  lies  are 
doomed  to  crash  down.  In  this  particular  instance, 
the  lies  crashed  down  upon  the  heads  of  the  people 
fleeing  from  their  reeling  habitations,  and  many  were 
killed.  They  paid  the  penalty  of  dishonesty. 

Not  alone  should  the  construction  of  a  house  be 
truthful  and  honest,  but  the  material  must  be  honest. 
They  that  lived  in  San  Francisco  were  dishonest  in 
the  material  they  used.  They  sold  one  quality  of 
material  and  delivered  another  quality  of  material. 
They  always  delivered  an  inferior  quality.  There 
is  not  one  case  recorded  in  the  business  history  of 
San  Francisco  where  a  contractor  or  builder  de 
livered  a  quality  superior  to  the  one  sold.  A  seven- 


i68  THE  HOUSE   BEAUTIFUL 

million-dollar  city  hall  became  thirty  cents  in  twenty- 
eight  seconds.  Because  the  mortar  was  not  honest, 
a  thousand  walls  crashed  down  and  scores  of  lives 
were  snuffed  out.  There  is  something,  after  all,  in 
the  contention  of  a  few  religionists  that  the  San  Fran 
cisco  earthquake  was  a  punishment  for  sin.  It  was 
a  punishment  for  sin;  but  it  was  not  for  sin  against 
God.  The  people  of  San  Francisco  sinned  against 
themselves. 

An  honest  house  tells  the  truth  about  itself. 
There  is  a  house  here  in  Glen  Ellen.  It  stands  on  a 
corner.  It  is  built  of  beautiful  red  stone.  Yet  it  is 
not  beautiful.  On  three  sides  the  stone  is  joined 
and  pointed.  The  fourth  side  is  the  rear.  It  faces 
the  back  yard.  The  stone  is  not  pointed.  It  is 
all  a  smudge  of  dirty  mortar,  with  here  and  there 
bricks  worked  in  when  the  stone  gave  out.  The 
house  is  not  what  it  seems.  It  is  a  lie.  All  three  of 
the  walls  spend  their  time  lying  about  the  fourth  wall. 
They  keep  shouting  out  that  the  fourth  wall  is  as 
beautiful  as  they.  If  I  lived  long  in  that  house  I 
should  not  be  responsible  for  my  morals.  The  house 
is  like  a  man  in  purple  and  fine  linen,  who  hasn't 
had  a  bath  for  a  month.  If  I  lived  long  in  that 


THE  HOUSE   BEAUTIFUL  169 

house  I  should  become  a  dandy  and  cut  out  bathing 
—  for  the  same  reason,  I  suppose,  that  an  African  is 
black  and  that  an  Eskimo  eats  whale-blubber.  I 
shall  not  build  a  house  like  that  house. 

Last  year  I  started  to  build  a  barn.  A  man  who 
was  a  liar  undertook  to  do  the  stonework  and  con 
crete  work  for  me.  He  could  not  tell  the  truth  to  my 
face;  he  could  not  tell  the  truth  in  his  work.  I  was 
building  for  posterity.  The  concrete  foundations 
were  four  feet  wide  and  sunk  three  and  one-half  feet 
into  the  earth.  The  stone  walls  were  two  feet  thick 
and  nine  feet  high.  Upon  them  were  to  rest  the 
great  beams  that  were  to  carry  all  the  weight  of  hay 
and  the  forty  tons  of  tile  roof.  The  man  who  was 
a  liar  made  beautiful  stone  walls.  I  used  to  stand 
alongside  of  them  and  love  them.  I  caressed  their 
massive  strength  with  my  hands.  I  thought  about 
them  in  bed,  before  I  went  to  sleep.  And  they  were 
lies. 

Came  the  earthquake.  Fortunately  the  rest  of 
the  building  of  the  barn  had  been  postponed.  The 
beautiful  stone  walls  cracked  in  all  directions.  I 
started  to  repair,  and  discovered  the  whole  enormous 
lie.  The  walls  were  shells.  On  each  face  were 


170  THE  HOUSE   BEAUTIFUL 

beautiful,  massive  stones  —  on  edge.  The  inside 
was  hollow.  This  hollow  in  some  places  was  filled 
with  clay  and  loose  gravel.  In  other  places  it  was 
filled  with  air  and  emptiness,  with  here  and  there  a 
piece  of  kindling-wood  or  dry-goods  box,  to  aid  in 
the  making  of  the  shell.  The  walls  were  lies.  They 
were  beautiful,  but  they  were  not  useful.  Construc 
tion  and  decoration  had  been  divorced.  The  walls 
were  all  decoration.  They  hadn't  any  construction 
in  them.  "As  God  lets  Satan  live,"  I  let  that  lying 
man  live,  but  —  I  have  built  new  walls  from  the 
foundation  up. 

And  now  to  my  own  house  beautiful,  which  I  shall 
build  some  seven  or  ten  years  from  now.  I  have  a 
few  general  ideas  about  it.  It  must  be  honest  in 
construction,  material,  and  appearance.  If  any 
feature  of  it,  despite  my  efforts,  shall  tell  lies,  I  shall 
remove  that  feature.  Utility  and  beauty  must  be 
indissolubly  wedded.  Construction  and  decoration 
must  be  one.  If  the  particular  details  keep  true  to 
these  general  ideas,  all  will  be  well. 

I  have  not  thought  of  many  details.  But  here  are 
a  few.  Take  the  bath-room,  for  instance.  It  shall 
be  as  beautiful  as  any  room  in  the  house,  just  as  it 


THE  HOUSE   BEAUTIFUL  171 

will  be  as  useful.  The  chance  is,  that  it  will  be  the 
most  expensive  room  in  the  house.  Upon  that  we 
are  resolved  —  even  if  we  are  compelled  to  build  it 
first,  and  to  live  in  a  tent  till  we  can  get  more  money 
to  go  on  with  the  rest  of  the  house.  In  the  bath 
room  no  delights  of  the  bath  shall  be  lacking.  Also, 
a  large  part  of  the  expensiveness  will  be  due  to  the 
use  of  material  that  will  make  it  easy  to  keep  the  bath 
room  clean  and  in  order.  Why  should  a  servant 
toil  unduly  that  my  body  may  be  clean  ?  On  the 
other  hand,  the  honesty  of  my  own  flesh,  and  the 
square  dealing  I  give  it,  are  more  important  than  all 
the  admiration  of  my  friends  for  expensive  decorative 
schemes  and  magnificent  trivialities.  More  delight 
ful  to  me  is  a  body  that  sings  than  a  stately  and  costly 
grand  staircase  built  for  show.  Not  that  I  like  grand 
staircases  less,  but  that  I  like  bath-rooms  more. 

I  often  regret  that  I  was  born  in  this  particular 
period  of  the  world.  In  the  matter  of  servants, 
how  I  wish  I  were  living  in  the  golden  future  of  the 
world,  where  there  will  be  no  servants  —  naught 
but  service  of  love.  But  in  the  meantime,  living  here 
and  now,  being  practical,  understanding  the  rational 
ity  and  the  necessity  of  the  division  of  labor,  I  accept 


172  THE  HOUSE  BEAUTIFUL 

servants.  But  such  acceptance  does  not  justify 
me  in  lack  of  consideration  for  them.  In  my  house 
beautiful,  their  rooms  shall  not  be  dens  and  holes. 
And  on  this  score  I  foresee  a  fight  with  the  architect. 
They  shall  have  bath-rooms,  toilet  conveniences, 
and  comforts  for  their  leisure  time  and  human  life  — 
if  I  have  to  work  Sundays  to  pay  for  it.  Even  under 
the  division  of  labor  I  recognize  that  no  man  has  a 
right  to  servants  who  will  not  treat  them  as  humans 
compounded  of  the  same  clay  as  himself,  with  similar 
bundles  of  nerves  and  desires,  contradictions,  irri 
tabilities,  and  lovablenesses.  Heaven  in  the  drawing- 
room  and  hell  in  the  kitchen  is  not  the  atmosphere 
for  a  growing  child  to  breathe  —  nor  an  adult  either. 
One  of  the  great  and  selfish  objections  to  chattel 
slavery  was  the  effect  on  the  masters  themselves. 

And  because  of  the  foregoing,  one  chief  aim  in  the 
building  of  my  house  beautiful  will  be  to  have  a  house 
that  will  require  the  minimum  of  trouble  and  work 
to  keep  clean  and  orderly.  It  will  be  no  spick  and 
span  and  polished  house,  with  an  immaculateness 
that  testifies  to  the  tragedy  of  drudge.  I  live  in 
California  where  the  days  are  warm.  Yd  prefer  that 
the  servants  had  three  hours  to  go  swimming  (or 


THE  HOUSE   BEAUTIFUL  173 

hammocking)  than  be  compelled  to  spend  those  three 
hours  in  keeping  the  house  spick  and  span.  There 
fore  it  devolves  upon  me  to  build  a  house  that  can 
be  kept  clean  and  orderly  without  the  need  of  those 
three  hours. 

But  underneath  the  spick  and  span  there  is  some 
thing  more  dreadful  than  the  servitude  of  the  ser 
vants.  This  dreadful  thing  is  the  philosophy  of 
the  spick  and  span.  In  Korea  the  national  costume 
is  white.  Nobleman  and  coolie  dress  alike  in  white. 
It  is  hell  on  the  women  who  do  the  washing,  but  there 
is  more  in  it  than  that.  The  coolie  cannot  keep  his 
white  clothes  clean.  He  toils  and  they  get  dirty. 
The  dirty  white  of  his  costume  is  the  token  of  his 
inferiority.  The  nobleman's  dress  is  always  spotless 
white.  It  means  that  he  doesn't  have  to  work.  But 
it  means,  further,  that  somebody  else  has  to  work  for 
him.  His  superiority  is  not  based  upon  song-craft 
nor  statecraft,  upon  the  foot-races  he  has  run  nor  the 
wrestlers  he  has  thrown.  His  superiority  is  based 
upon  the  fact  that  he  doesn't  have  to  work,  and 
that  others  are  compelled  to  work  for  him.  And  so 
the  Korean  drone  flaunts  his  clean  white  clothes,  for 
the  same  reason  that  the  Chinese  flaunts  his  mon- 


1/4  THE   HOUSE   BEAUTIFUL 

strous  finger-nails,  and  the  white  man  and  woman 
flaunt  the  spick-and-spanness  of  their  spotless 
houses. 

There  will  be  hardwood  floors  in  my  house  beau 
tiful.  But  these  floors  will  not  be  polished  mirrors 
nor  skating-rinks.  They  will  be  just  plain  and 
common  hardwood  floors.  Beautiful  carpets  are 
not  beautiful  to  the  mind  that  knows  they  are  filled 
with  germs  and  bacilli.  They  are  no  more  beautiful 
than  the  hectic  flush  of  fever  or  the  silvery  skin  of 
leprosy.  Besides,  carpets  enslave.  A  thing  that 
enslaves  is  a  monster,  and  monsters  are  not  beautiful. 

The  fireplaces  of  my  house  will  be  many  and  large. 
Small  fires  and  cold  weather  mean  hermetically 
sealed  rooms  and  a  jealous  cherishing  of  heated  and 
filth-laden  air.  With  large  fireplaces  and  generous 
heat,  some  windows  may  be  open  all  the  time,  and 
without  hardship  all  the  windows  can  be  opened 
every  little  while  and  the  rooms  flushed  with  clean 
pure  air.  I  have  nearly  died  in  the  stagnant,  rotten 
air  of  other  people's  houses  —  especially  in  the  East 
ern  states.  In  Maine  I  have  slept  in  a  room  with 
storm-windows  immovable,  and  with  one  small  pane, 
five  inches  by  six,  that  could  be  opened.  Did  I  say 


THE   HOUSE   BEAUTIFUL  175 

slept  ?  I  panted  with  my  mouth  in  the  opening  and 
blasphemed  till  I  ruined  all  my  chances  of  heaven. 

For  countless  thousands  of  years  my  ancestors 
have  lived  and  died  and  drawn  all  their  breaths  in 
the  open  air.  It  is  only  recently  that  we  have  begun 
to  live  in  houses.  The  change  is  a  hardship,  es 
pecially  on  the  lungs.  I've  got  only  one  pair  of  lungs, 
and  I  haven't  the  address  of  any  repair-shop.  Where 
fore  I  stick  by  the  open  air  as  much  as  possible. 
For  this  reason  my  house  will  have  large  verandas, 
and,  near  to  the  kitchen,  there  will  be  a  veranda 
dining-room.  Also,  there  will  be  a  veranda  fire 
place,  where  we  can  breathe  fresh  air  and  be  com 
fortable  when  the  evenings  are  touched  with  frost. 

I  have  a  plan  for  my  own  bedroom.  I  spend  long 
hours  in  bed,  reading,  studying,  and  working.  I 
have  tried  sleeping  in  the  open,  but  the  lamp  attracts 
all  the  creeping,  crawling,  butting,  flying,  fluttering 
things  to  the  pages  of  my  book,  into  my  ears  and 
blankets,  and  down  the  back  of  my  neck.  So  my 
bedroom  shall  be  indoors. 

But  it  will  not  be  of  indoors.  Three  sides  of  it 
will  be  open.  The  fourth  side  will  divide  it  from 
the  rest  of  the  house.  The  three  sides  will  be 


176  THE  HOUSE   BEAUTIFUL 

screened  against  the  creeping,  fluttering  things,  but 
not  against  the  good  fresh  air  and  all  the  breezes 
that  blow.  For  protection  against  storm,  to  keep  out 
the  driving  rain,  there  will  be  a  sliding  glass,  so  made 
that  when  not  in  use  it  will  occupy  small  space  and 
shut  out  very  little  air. 

There  is  little  more  to  say  about  this  house  I  am 
to  build  seven  or  ten  years  from  now.  There  is 
plenty  of  time  in  which  to  work  up  all  the  details 
in  accord  with  the  general  principles  I  have  laid  down. 
It  will  be  a  usable  house  and  a  beautiful  house, 
wherein  the  aesthetic  guest  can  find  comfort  for  his 
eyes  as  well  as  for  his  body.  It  will  be  a  happy 
house  —  or  else  I'll  burn  it  down.  It  will  be  a  house 
of  air  and  sunshine  and  laughter.  These  three  can 
not  be  divorced.  Laughter  without  air  and  sunshine 
becomes  morbid,  decadent,  demoniac.  I  have  in  me 
a  thousand  generations.  Laughter  that  is  decadent 
is  not  good  for  these  thousand  generations. 

GLEN  ELLEN,  CALIFORNIA, 
July,  1906. 


THE  GOLD  HUNTERS  OF  THE  NORTH 


THE  GOLD  HUNTERS  OF  THE  NORTH 

"  Where  the  Northern  Lights  come  down  o*  nights  to  dance  on 
the  houseless  snow." 


TVAN,  I  forbid  you  to  go  farther  in  this  under 
taking.     Not  a  word  about  this,  or  we  are  all 
undone.     Let  the  Americans  and  the  English 
know  that  we  have  gold  in  these   mountains,  then 
we  are  ruined.     They  will  rush  in  on  us  by  thou 
sands,  and  crowd  us  to  the  wall  —  to  the  death." 

So  spoke  the  old  Russian  governor,  Baranov,  at 
Sitka,  in  1804,  to  one  of  his  Slavonian  hunters,  who 
had  just  drawn  from  his  pocket  a  handful  of  golden 
nuggets.  Full  well  Baranov,  fur  trader  and  autocrat, 
understood  and  feared  the  coming  of  the  sturdy, 
indomitable  gold  hunters  of  Anglo-Saxon  stock. 
And  thus  he  suppressed  the  news,  as  did  the  governors 
that  followed  him,  so  that  when  the  United  States 
bought  Alaska  in  1867,  she  bought  it  for  its  furs  and 
fisheries,  without  a  thought  of  its  treasures  under 
ground. 

179 


180  GOLD  HUNTERS  OF  THE  NORTH 

No  sooner,  however,  had  Alaska  become  American 
soil  than  thousands  of  our  adventurers  were  afoot 
and  afloat  for  the  north.  They  were  the  men  of  "the 
days  of  gold,"  the  men  of  California,  Fraser,  Cassiar, 
and  Cariboo.  With  the  mysterious,  infinite  faith 
of  the  prospector,  they  believed  that  the  gold  streak, 
which  ran  through  the  Americas  from  Cape  Horn 
to  California,  did  not  "peter  out"  in  British  Colum 
bia.  That  it  extended  farther  north,  was  their 
creed,  and  "Farther  North!"  became  their  cry. 
No  time  was  lost,  and  in  the  early  seventies,  leaving 
the  Treadwell  and  the  Silver  Bow  Basin  to  be  dis 
covered  by  those  who  came  after,  they  went  plung 
ing  on  into  the  white  unknown.  North,  farther 
north,  they  struggled,  till  their  picks  rang  in  the  frozen 
beaches  of  the  Arctic  Ocean,  and  they  shivered  by 
driftwood  fires  on  the  ruby  sands  of  Nome. 

But  first,  in  order  that  this  colossal  adventure  may 
be  fully  grasped,  the  recentness  and  the  remoteness  of 
Alaska  must  be  emphasized.  The  interior  of  Alaska 
and  the  contiguous  Canadian  territory  was  a  vast 
wilderness.  Its  hundreds  of  thousands  of  square 
miles  were  as  dark  and  chartless  as  Darkest  Africa. 
In  1847,  when  the  first  Hudson  Bay  Company  agents 


GOLD  HUNTERS  OF  THE  NORTH  181 

crossed  over  the  Rockies  from  the  Mackenzie  to 
poach  on  the  preserves  of  the  Russian  Bear,  they 
thought  that  the  Yukon  flowed  north  and  emptied 
into  the  Arctic  Ocean.  Hundreds  of  miles  below, 
however,  were  the  outposts  of  the  Russian  traders. 
They,  in  turn,  did  not  know  where  the  Yukon  had 
its  source,  and  it  was  not  till  later  that  Russ  and 
Saxon  learned  that  it  was  the  same  mighty  stream 
they  were  occupying.  And  a  little  over  ten  years 
later,  Frederick  Whymper  voyaged  up  the  Great 
Bend  to  Fort  Yukon  under  the  Arctic  Circle. 

From  fort  to  fort,  from  York  Factory  on  Hudson's 
Bay  to  Fort  Yukon  in  Alaska,  the  English  traders 
transported  their  goods,  —  a  round  trip  requiring 
from  a  year  to  a  year  and  a  half.  It  was  one  of  their 
deserters,  in  1867,  escaping  down  the  Yukon  to 
Bering  Sea,  who  was  the  first  white  man  to  make  the 
Northwest  Passage  by  land  from  the  Atlantic  to  the 
Pacific.  It  was  at  this  time  that  the  first  accurate 
description  of  a  fair  portion  of  the  Yukon  was  given 
by  Dr.  W.  H.  Ball,  of  the  Smithsonian  Institution. 
But  even  he  had  never  seen  its  source,  and  it  was  not 
given  him  to  appreciate  the  marvel  of  that  great 
natural  highway. 


1 8z  GOLD  HUNTERS  OF  THE  NORTH 

No  more  remarkable  river  in  this  one  particular 
is  there  in  the  world,  —  taking  its  rise  in  Crater  Lake, 
thirty  miles  from  the  ocean,  the  Yukon  flows  for 
twenty-five  hundred  miles,  through  the  heart  of  the 
continent,  ere  it  empties  into  the  sea.  A  portage 
of  thirty  miles,  and  then  a  highway  for  traffic  one 
tenth  the  girth  of  the  earth  ! 

As  late  as  1869,  Frederick  Whymper,  fellow  of  the 
Royal  Geographical  Society,  stated  on  hearsay  that 
the  Chilcat  Indians  were  believed  occasionally  to 
make  a  short  portage  across  the  Coast  Range  from 
salt  water  to  the  head-reaches  of  the  Yukon.  But  it 
remained  for  a  gold  hunter,  questing  north,  ever 
north,  to  be  first  of  all  white  men  to  cross  the  terrible 
Chilcoot  Pass,  and  tap  the  Yukon  at  its  head.  This 
happened  only  the  other  day,  but  the  man  has  become 
a  dim  legendary  hero.  Holt  was  his  name,  and 
already  the  mists  of  antiquity  have  wrapped  about 
the  time  of  his  passage.  1872,  1874,  and  1878  are 
the  dates  variously  given,  —  a  confusion  which  time 
will  never  clear. 

Holt  penetrated  as  far  as  the  Hootalinqua,  and  on 
his  return  to  the  coast  reported  coarse  gold.  The 
next  recorded  adventurer  is  one  Edward  Bean,  who  in 


GOLD  HUNTERS  OF  THE  NORTH  183 

1880  headed  a  party  of  twenty-five  miners  from 
Sitka  into  the  uncharted  land.  And  in  the  same 
year,  other  parties  (now  forgotten,  for  who  remembers 
or  ever  hears  the  wanderings  of  the  gold  hunters  ?) 
crossed  the  Pass,  built  boats  out  of  the  standing  tim 
ber,  and  drifted  down  the  Yukon  and  farther  north. 
And  then,  for  a  quarter  of  a  century,  the  unknown 
and  unsung  heroes  grappled  with  the  frost,  and 
groped  for  the  gold  they  were  sure  lay  somewhere 
among  the  shadows  of  the  Pole.  In  the  struggle 
with  the  terrifying  and  pitiless  natural  forces,  they 
returned  to  the  primitive,  garmenting  themselves  in 
the  skins  of  wild  beasts,  and  covering  their  feet  with 
the  walrus  mucluc  and  the  moosehide  moccasin. 
They  forgot  the  world  and  its  ways,  as  the  world  had 
forgotten  them;  killed  their  meat  as  they  found  it; 
feasted  in  plenty  and  starved  in  famine,  and  searched 
unceasingly  for  the  yellow  lure.  They  crisscrossed 
the  land  in  every  direction,  threaded  countless  un 
mapped  rivers  in  precarious  birch-bark  canoes,  and 
with  snowshoes  and  dogs  broke  trail  through  thou 
sands  of  miles  of  silent  white,  where  man  had  never 
been.  They  struggled  on,  under  the  aurora  borealis 
or  the  midnight  sun,  through  temperatures  that 


1 84  GOLD  HUNTERS  OF  THE  NORTH 

ranged  from  one  hundred  degrees  above  zero  to  eighty 
degrees  below,  living,  in  the  grim  humor  of  the  land, 
on  "rabbit  tracks  and  salmon  bellies." 

To-day,  a  man  may  wander  away  from  the  trail 
for  a  hundred  days,  and  just  as  he  is  congratulating 
himself  that  at  last  he  is  treading  virgin  soil,  he  will 
come  upon  some  ancient  and  dilapidated  cabin, 
and  forget  his  disappointment  in  wonder  at  the  man 
who  reared  the  logs.  Still,  if  one  wanders  from  the 
trail  far  enough  and  deviously  enough,  he  may  chance 
upon  a  few  thousand  square  miles  which  he  may 
have  all  to  himself.  On  the  other  hand,  no  matter 
how  far  and  how  deviously  he  may  wander,  the  possi 
bility  always  remains  that  he  may  stumble,  not  alone 
upon  a  deserted  cabin,  but  upon  an  occupied  one. 

As  an  instance  of  this,  and  of  the  vastness  of  the 
land,  no  better  case  need  be  cited  than  that  of  Harry 
Maxwell.  An  able  seaman,  hailing  from  New 
Bedford,  Massachusetts,  his  ship,  the  brig  Fannie 
E.  Lee,  was  pinched  in  the  Arctic  ice.  Passing 
from  whaleship  to  whaleship,  he  eventually  turned 
up  at  Point  Barrow  in  the  summer  of  1880.  He  was 
north  of  the  Northland,  and  from  this  point  of  vantage 
he  determined  to  pull  south  into  the  interior  in  search 


GOLD  HUNTERS  OF  THE  NORTH  185 

of  gold.  Across  the  mountains  from  Fort  Mac- 
pherson,  and  a  couple  of  hundred  miles  eastward 
from  the  Mackenzie,  he  built  a  cabin  and  established 
his  headquarters.  And  here,  for  nineteen  continu 
ous  years,  he  hunted  his  living  and  prospected.  He 
ranged  from  the  never  opening  ice  to  the  north  as  far 
south  as  the  Great  Slave  Lake.  Here  he  met  War- 
burton  Pike,  the  author  and  explorer,  —  an  incident 
he  now  looks  back  upon  as  chief  among  the  few  inci 
dents  of  his  solitary  life. 

When  this  sailor-miner  had  accumulated  $20,000 
worth  of  dust  he  concluded  that  civilization  was  good 
enough  for  him,  and  proceeded  "to  pull  for  the  out 
side."  From  the  Mackenzie  he  went  up  the  Little 
Peel  to  its  headwaters,  found  a  pass  through  the 
mountains,  nearly  starved  to  death  on  his  way  across 
to  the  Porcupine  Hills,  and  eventually  came  out  on 
the  Yukon  River,  where  he  learned  for  the  first  time 
of  the  Yukon  gold  hunters  and  their  discoveries. 
Yet  for  twenty  years  they  had  been  working  there, 
his  next-door  neighbors,  virtually,  in  a  land  of  such 
great  spaces.  At  Victoria,  British  Columbia,  pre 
vious  to  his  going  east  over  the  Canadian  Pacific 
(the  existence  of  which  he  had  just  learned),  he  preg- 


1 86  GOLD  HUNTERS  OF  THE  NORTH 

nantly  remarked  that  he  had  faith  in  the  Mackenzie 
watershed,  and  that  he  was  going  back  after  he  had 
taken  in  the  World's  Fair  and  got  a  whiff  or  two  of 
civilization. 

Faith  !  It  may  or  may  not  remove  mountains, 
but  it  has  certainly  made  the  Northland.  No  Chris 
tian  martyr  ever  possessed  greater  faith  than  did 
the  pioneers  of  Alaska.  They  never  doubted  the 
bleak  and  barren  land.  Those  who  came  remained, 
and  more  ever  came.  They  could  not  leave.  They 
"knew"  the  gold  was  there,  and  they  persisted. 
Somehow,  the  romance  of  the  land  and  the  quest 
entered  into  their  blood,  the  spell  of  it  gripped  hold  of 
them  and  would  not  let  them  go.  Man  after  man 
of  them,  after  the  most  terrible  privation  and  suffer 
ing,  shook  the  muck  of  the  country  from  his  mocca 
sins  and  departed  for  good.  But  the  following  spring 
always  found  him  drifting  down  the  Yukon  on  the 
tail  of  the  ice  jams. 

Jack  McQuestion  aptly  vindicates  the  grip  of  the 
North.  After  a  residence  of  thirty  years  he  insists 
that  the  climate  is  delightful,  and  declares  that  when 
ever  he  makes  a  trip  to  the  States  he  is  afflicted  with 
homesickness.  Needless  to  say,  the  North  still  has 


GOLD  HUNTERS  OF  THE  NORTH  187 

him  and  will  keep  tight  hold  of  him  until  he  dies. 
In  fact,  for  him  to  die  elsewhere  would  be  inartistic 
and  insincere.  Of  three  of  the  "pioneer"  pioneers, 
Jack  McQuestion  alone  survives.  In  1871,  from  one 
to  seven  years  before  Holt  went  over  Chilcoot,  in 
the  company  of  Al  Mayo  and  Arthur  Harper,  Mc 
Question  came  into  the  Yukon  from  the  Northwest 
over  the  Hudson  Bay  Company  route  from  the 
Mackenzie  to  Fort  Yukon.  The  names  of  these 
three  men,  as  their  lives,  are  bound  up  in  the  history 
of  the  country,  and  so  long  as  there  be  histories  and 
charts,  that  long  will  the  Mayo  and  McQuestion 
rivers  and  the  Harper  and  Ladue  town  site  of  Daw- 
son  be  remembered.  As  an  agent  of  the  Alaska  Com 
mercial  Company,  in  1873,  McQuestion  built  Fort 
Reliance,  six  miles  below  the  Klondike  River.  In 
1898  the  writer  met  Jack  McQuestion  at  Minook, 
on  the  Lower  Yukon.  The  old  pioneer,  though  griz 
zled,  was  hale  and  hearty,  and  as  optimistic  as  when 
he  first  journeyed  into  the  land  along  the  path  of  the 
Circle.  And  no  man  more  beloved  is  there  in  all  the 
North.  There  will  be  great  sadness  there  when  his 
soul  goes  questing  on  over  the  Last  Divide,  —  "far 
ther  north,"  perhaps,  —  who  can  tell  ? 


1 88  GOLD  HUNTERS  OF  THE  NORTH 

Frank  Dinsmore  is  a  fair  sample  of  the  men  who 
made  the  Yukon  country.  A  Yankee,  born  in 
Auburn,  Maine,  the  Wanderlust  early  laid  him  by  the 
heels,  and  at  sixteen  he  was  heading  west  on  the  trail 
that  led  "farther  north."  He  prospected  in  the 
Black  Hills,  Montana,  and  in  the  Coeur  d'Alene, 
then  heard  the  whisper  of  the  North,  and  went  up  to 
Juneau  on  the  Alaskan  Panhandle.  But  the  North 
still  whispered,  and  more  insistently,  and  he  could 
not  rest  till  he  went  over  Chilcoot,  and  down  into  the 
mysterious  Silent  Land.  This  was  in  1882,  and  he 
went  down  the  chain  of  lakes,  down  the  Yukon,  up 
the  Pelly,  and  tried  his  luck  on  the  bars  of  McMillan 
River.  In  the  fall,  a  perambulating  skeleton,  he 
came  back  over  the  Pass  in  a  blizzard,  with  a  rag  of 
a  shirt,  tattered  overalls,  and  a  handful  of  raw  flour. 

But  he  was  unafraid.  That  winter  he  worked 
for  a  grubstake  in  Juneau,  and  the  next  spring  found 
the  heels  of  his  moccasins  turned  toward  salt  water 
and  his  face  toward  Chilcoot.  This  was  repeated 
the  next  spring,  and  the  following  spring,  and  the 
spring  after  that,  until,  in  1885,  he  went  over  the  Pass 
for  good.  There  was  to  be  no  return  for  him  until 
he  found  the  gold  he  sought. 


GOLD  HUNTERS  OF  THE  NORTH  189 

The  years  came  and  went,  but  he  remained  true 
to  his  resolve.  For  eleven  long  years,  with  snow-shoe 
and  canoe,  pickaxe  and  goldpan,  he  wrote  out  his 
life  on  the  face  of  the  land.  Upper  Yukon,  Middle 
Yukon,  Lower  Yukon,  —  he  prospected  faithfully 
and  well.  His  bed  was  anywhere.  Winter  or 
summer  he  carried  neither  tent  nor  stove,  and 
his  six-pound  sleeping-robe  of  Arctic  hare  was 
the  warmest  covering  he  was  ever  known  to  pos 
sess.  Rabbit  tracks  and  salmon  bellies  were  his 
diet  with  a  vengeance,  for  he  depended  largely 
on  his  rifle  and  fishing-tackle.  His  endurance 
equalled  his  courage.  On  a  wager  he  lifted  thirteen 
fifty-pound  sacks  of  flour  and  walked  off  with  them. 
Winding  up  a  seven-hundred-mile  trip  on  the  ice 
with  a  forty-mile  run,  he  came  into  camp  at  six 
o'clock  in  the  evening  and  found  a  "squaw  dance" 
under  way.  He  should  have  been  exhausted.  Any 
way,  his  muclucs  were  frozen  stiff.  But  he  kicked 
them  off  and  danced  all  night  in  stocking-feet. 

At  the  last  fortune  came  to  him.  The  quest  was 
ended,  and  he  gathered  up  his  gold  and  pulled  for  the 
outside.  And  his  own  end  was  as  fitting  as  that  of  his 
quest.  Illness  came  upon  him  down  in  San  Fran- 


1 90  GOLD  HUNTERS  OF  THE  NORTH 

cisco,  and  his  splendid  life  ebbed  slowly  out  as  he  sat 
in  his  big  easy-chair,  in  the  Commercial  Hotel,  the 
"Yukoner's  home."  The  doctors  came,  discussed, 
consulted,  the  while  he  matured  more  plans  of  North 
land  adventure;  for  the  North  still  gripped  him  and 
would  not  let  him  go.  He  grew  weaker  day  by  day, 
but  each  day  he  said,  "To-morrow  I'll  be  all  right/' 
Other  old-timers,  "out  on  furlough,"  came  to  see  him. 
They  wiped  their  eyes  and  swore  under  their  breaths, 
then  entered  and  talked  largely  and  jovially  about 
going  in  with  him  over  the  trail  when  spring  came. 
But  there  in  the  big  easy-chair  it  was  that  his  Long 
Trail  ended,  and  the  life  passed  out  of  him  still  fixed 
on  "farther  north." 

From  the  time  of  the  first  white  man,  famine 
loomed  black  and  gloomy  over  the  land.  It  was 
chronic  with  the  Indians  and  Eskimos;  it  became 
chronic  with  the  gold  hunters.  It  was  ever  present, 
and  so  it  came  about  that  life  was  commonly  ex 
pressed  in  terms  of  "grub,"  — was  measured  by  cups 
of  flour.  Each  winter,  eight  months  long,  the  heroes 
of  the  frost  faced  starvation.  It  became  the  custom, 
as  fall  drew  on,  for  partners  to  cut  the  cards  or  draw 
straws  to  determine  which  should  hit  the  hazardous 


GOLD  HUNTERS  OF  THE  NORTH  191 

trail  for  salt  water,  and  which  should  remain  and 
endure  the  hazardous  darkness  of  the  Arctic  night. 

There  was  never  food  enough  to  winter  the  whole 
population.  The  A.  C.  Company  worked  hard  to 
freight  up  the  grub,  but  the  gold  hunters  came  faster 
and  dared  more  audaciously.  When  the  A.  C. 
Company  added  a  new  stern-wheeler  to  its  fleet, 
men  said,  "Now  we  shall  have  plenty."  But  more 
gold  hunters  poured  in  over  the  passes  to  the  south, 
more  voyagetirs  and  fur  traders  forced  a  way  through 
the  Rockies  from  the  east,  more  seal  hunters  and 
coast  adventurers  poled  up  from  Bering  Sea  on  the 
west,  more  sailors  deserted  from  the  whale-ships  to 
the  north,  and  they  all  starved  together  in  right 
brotherly  fashion.  More  steamers  were  added,  but 
the  tide  of  prospectors  welled  always  in  advance. 
Then  the  N.  A.  T.  &  T.  Company  came  upon  the 
scene,  and  both  companies  added  steadily  to  their 
fleets.  But  it  was  the  same  old  story;  famine 
would  not  depart.  In  fact,  famine  grew  with  the 
population,  till,  in  the  winter  of  1897-1898,  the 
United  States  government  was  forced  to  equip  a 
reindeer  relief  expedition.  As  of  old,  that  winter 
partners  cut  the  cards  and  drew  straws,  and  re- 


1 92  GOLD  HUNTERS  OF  THE  NORTH 

mained  or  pulled  for  salt  water  as  chance  decided. 
They  were  wise  of  old  time,  and  had  learned  never 
to  figure  on  relief  expeditions.  They  had  heard  of 
such  things,  but  no  mortal  man  of  them  had  ever  laid 
eyes  on  one. 

The  hard  luck  of  other  mining  countries  pales  into 
insignificance  before  the  hard  luck  of  the  North. 
And  as  for  the  hardship,  it  cannot  be  conveyed  by 
printed  page  or  word  of  mouth.  No  man  may  know 
who  has  not  undergone.  And  those  who  have  under 
gone,  out  of  their  knowledge,  claim  that  in  the  making 
of  the  world  God  grew  tired,  and  when  he  came  to 
the  last  barrowload,  "just  dumped  it  anyhow," 
and  that  was  how  Alaska  happened  to  be.  While 
no  adequate  conception  of  the  life  can  be  given  to  the 
stay-at-home,  yet  the  men  themselves  sometimes 
give  a  clew  to  its  rigors.  One  old  Minook  miner 
testified  thus:  "Haven't  you  noticed  the  expression 
on  the  faces  of  us  fellows  ?  You  can  tell  a  newcomer 
the  minute  you  see  him;  he  looks  alive,  enthusiastic, 
perhaps  jolly.  We  old  miners  are  always  grave, 
unless  we're  drinking." 

Another  old-timer,  out  of  the  bitterness  of  a  "home- 
mood,"  imagined  himself  a  Martian  astronomer  ex- 


GOLD  HUNTERS  OF  THE  NORTH  193 

plaining  to  a  friend,  with  the  aid  of  a  powerful  tele 
scope,  the  institutions  of  the  earth.  "There  are  the 
continents,"  he  indicated;  "and  up  there  near  the 
polar  cap  is  a  country,  frigid  and  burning  and  lonely 
and  apart,  called  Alaska.  Now,  in  other  countries 
and  states  there  are  great  insane  asylums,  but,  though 
crowded,  they  are  insufficient ;  so  there  is  Alaska 
given  over  to  the  worst  cases.  Now  and  then  some 
poor  insane  creature  comes  to  his  senses  in  those 
awful  solitudes,  and,  in  wondering  joy,  escapes  from 
the  land  and  hastens  back  to  his  home.  But  most 
cases  are  incurable.  They  just  suffer  along,  poor 
devils,  forgetting  their  former  life  quite,  or  recalling  it 
like  a  dream."  —  Again  the  grip  of  the  North,  which 
will  not  let  one  go,  —  for  "most  cases  are  incurable." 
For  a  quarter  of  a  century  the  battle  with  frost 
and  famine  went  on.  The  very  severity  of  the  strug 
gle  with  Nature  seemed  to  make  the  gold  hunters 
kindly  toward  one  another.  The  latch-string  was 
always  out,  and  the  open  hand  was  the  order  of  the 
day.  Distrust  was  unknown,  and  it  was  no  hyper 
bole  for  a  man  to  take  the  last  shirt  off  his  back 
for  a  comrade.  Most  significant  of  all,  perhaps,  in 
this  connection,  was  the  custom  of  the  old  days,  that 


i94  GOLD  HUNTERS  OF  THE  NORTH 

when  August  the  first  came  around,  the  prospectors 
who  had  failed  to  locate  "  pay  dirt"  were  permitted  to 
go  upon  the  ground  of  their  more  fortunate  comrades 
and  take  out  enough  for  the  next  year's  grub-stake. 
In  1885  rich  bar-washing  was  done  on  the  Stewart 
River,  and  in  1886  Cassiar  Bar  was  struck  just  below 
the  mouth  of  the  Hootalinqua.  It  was  at  this  time 
that  the  first  moderate  strike  was  made  on  Forty 
Mile  Creek,  so  called  because  it  was  judged  to  be  that 
distance  below  Fort  Reliance  of  Jack  McQuestion 
fame.  A  prospector  named  Williams  started  for 
the  outside  with  dogs  and  Indians  to  carry  the  news, 
but  suffered  such  hardship  on  the  summit  of  Chilcoot 
that  he  was  carried  dying  into  the  store  of  Captain 
John  Healy  at  Dyea.  But  he  had  brought  the  news 
through  —  coarse  gold!  Within  three  months  more 
than  two  hundred  miners  had  passed  in  over  Chilcoot, 
stampeding  for  Forty  Mile.  Find  followed  find,  — 
Sixty  Mile,  Miller,  Glacier,  Birch,  Franklin,  and  the 
Koyokuk.  But  they  were  all  moderate  discoveries, 
and  the  miners  still  dreamed  and  searched  for  the 
fabled  stream,  "Too  Much  Gold,"  where  gold  was 
so  plentiful  that  gravel  had  to  be  shovelled  into  the 
sluice-boxes  in  order  to  wash  it. 


GOLD  HUNTERS  OF  THE  NORTH  195 

And  all  the  time  the  Northland  was  preparing  to 
play  its  own  huge  joke.  It  was  a  great  joke,  albeit 
an  exceeding  bitter  one,  and  it  has  led  the  old-timers 
to  believe  that  the  land  is  left  in  darkness  the  better 
part  of  the  year  because  God  goes  away  and  leaves 
it  to  itself.  After  all  the  risk  and  toil  and  faithful 
endeavor,  it  was  destined  that  few  of  the  heroes 
should  be  in  at  the  finish  when  Too  Much  Gold 
turned  its  yellow  treasure  to  the  stars. 

First,  there  was  Robert  Henderson  —  and  this 
is  true  history.  Henderson  had  faith  in  the  Indian 
River  district.  For  three  years,  by  himself,  depend 
ing  mainly  on  his  rifle,  living  on  straight  meat  a 
large  portion  of  the  time,  he  prospected  many  of  the 
Indian  River  tributaries,  just  missed  finding  the  rich 
creeks,  Sulphur  and  Dominion,  and  managed  to 
make  grub  (poor  grub)  out  of  Quartz  Creek  and 
Australia  Creek.  Then  he  crossed  the  divide  be 
tween  Indian  River  and  the  Klondike,  and  on  one 
of  the  "  feeders  "  of  the  latter  found  eight  cents  to  the 
pan.  This  was  considered  excellent  in  those  simple 
days.  Naming  the  creek  "Gold  Bottom,"  he  re- 
crossed  the  divide  and  got  three  men,  Munson,  Dai- 
ton,  and  Swanson,  to  return  with  him.  The  four 


196  GOLD  HUNTERS  OF  THE  NORTH 

took  out  $750.  And  be  it  emphasized,  and  empha 
sized  again,  that  this  was  the  first  Klondike  gold  ever 
shovelled  in  and  washed  out.  And  be  it  also  em 
phasized,  that  Robert  Henderson  was  the  discoverer 
of  Klondike,  all  lies  and  hearsay  tales  to  the  contrary. 

Running  out  of  grub,  Henderson  again  recrossed 
the  divide,  and  went  down  the  Indian  River  and  up 
the  Yukon  to  Sixty  Mile.  Here  Joe  Ladue  ran  the 
trading  post,  and  here  Joe  Ladue  had  originally 
grub-staked  Henderson.  Henderson  told  his  tale, 
and  a  dozen  men  (all  it  contained)  deserted  the  Post 
for  the  scene  of  his  find.  Also,  Henderson  per 
suaded  a  party  of  prospectors,  bound  for  Stewart 
River,  to  forego  their  trip  and  go  down  and  locate 
with  him.  He  loaded  his  boat  with  supplies,  drifted 
down  the  Yukon  to  the  mouth  of  the  Klondike,  and 
towed  and  poled  up  the  Klondike  to  Gold  Bottom. 
But  at  the  mouth  of  the  Klondike  he  met  George 
Carmack,  and  thereby  hangs  the  tale. 

Carmack  was  a  squawman.  He  was  familiarly 
known  as  "Siwash"  George,  —  a  derogatory  term 
which  had  arisen  out  of  his  affinity  for  the  Indians. 
At  the  time  Henderson  encountered  him  he  was 
catching  salmon  with  his  Indian  wife  and  relatives 


GOLD  HUNTERS  OF  THE  NORTH  197 

on  the  site  of  what  was  to  become  Dawson,  the 
Golden  City  of  the  Snows.  Henderson,  bubbling 
over  with  good-will,  open-handed,  told  Carmack 
of  his  discovery.  But  Carmack  was  satisfied  where 
he  was.  He  was  possessed  by  no  overweening  desire 
for  the  strenuous  life.  Salmon  were  good  enough 
for  him.  But  Henderson  urged  him  to  come  on  and 
locate,  until,  when  he  yielded,  he  wanted  to  take  the 
whole  tribe  along.  Henderson  refused  to  stand  for 
this,  said  that  he  must  give  the  preference  over  Si- 
washes  to  his  old  Sixty  Mile  friends,  and,  it  is  ru 
mored,  said  some  things  about  Siwashes  that  were 
not  nice. 

The  next  morning  Henderson  went  on  alone  up  the 
Klondike  to  Gold  Bottom.  Carmack,  by  this  time 
aroused,  took  a  short  cut  afoot  for  the  same  place. 
Accompanied  by  his  two  Indian  brothers-in-law, 
Skookum  Jim  and  Tagish  Charley,  he  went  up 
Rabbit  Creek  (now  Bonanza),  crossed  into  Gold 
Bottom,  and  staked  near  Henderson's  discovery. 
On  the  way  up  he  had  panned  a  few  shovels  on  Rab 
bit  Creek,  and  he  showed  Henderson  "colors"  he 
had  obtained.  Henderson  made  him  promise,  if  he 
found  anything  on  the  way  back,  that  he  would  send 


198  GOLD  HUNTERS  OF  THE  NORTH 

up  one  of  the  Indians  with  the  news.  Henderson  also 
agreed  to  pay  for  this  service,  for  he  seemed  to  feel 
that  they  were  on  the  verge  of  something  big,  and  he 
wanted  to  make  sure. 

Carmack  returned  down  Rabbit  Creek.  While 
he  was  taking  a  sleep  on  the  bank  about  half  a  mile 
below  the  mouth  of  what  was  to  be  known  as  Eldo 
rado,  Skookum  Jim  tried  his  luck,  and  from  surface 
prospects  got  from  ten  cents  to  a  dollar  to  the  pan. 
Carmack  and  his  brothers-in-law  staked  and  "hit 
the  high  places"  for  Forty  Mile,  where  they  filed 
on  the  claims  before  Captain  Constantine,  and  re 
named  the  creek  Bonanza.  And  Henderson  was 
forgotten.  No  word  of  it  reached  him.  Carmack 
broke  his  promise. 

Weeks  afterward,  when  Bonanza  and  Eldorado 
were  staked  from  end  to  end  and  there  was  no  more 
room,  a  party  of  late  comers  pushed  over  the  divide 
and  down  to  Gold  Bottom,  where  they  found  Hen 
derson  still  at  work.  When  they  told  him  they  were 
from  Bonanza,  he  was  nonplussed.  He  had  never 
heard  of  such  a  place.  But  when  they  described  it, 
he  recognized  it  as  Rabbit  Creek.  Then  they  told 
him  of  its  marvellous  richness,  and,  as  Tappan  Adney 


GOLD  HUNTERS  OF  THE  NORTH  199 

relates,  when  Henderson  realized  what  he  had  lost 
through  Carmack's  treachery,  "he  threw  down  his 
shovel  and  went  and  sat  on  the  bank,  so  sick  at  heart 
that  it  was  some  time  before  he  could  speak/' 

Then  there  were  the  rest  of  the  old-timers,  the  men 
of  Forty  Mile  and  Circle  City.  At  the  time  of  the 
discovery,  nearly  all  of  them  were  over  to  the  west 
at  work  in  the  old  diggings  or  prospecting  for  new 
ones.  As  they  said  of  themselves,  they  were  the  kind 
of  men  who  are  always  caught  out  with  forks  when 
it  rains  soup.  In  the  stampede  that  followed  the 
news  of  Carmack's  strike  very  few  old  miners  took 
part.  They  were  not  there  to  take  part.  But  the 
men  who  did  go  on  the  stampede  were  mainly  the 
worthless  ones,  the  newcomers,  and  the  camp  hang 
ers-on.  And  while  Bob  Henderson  plugged  away  to 
the  east,  and  the  heroes  plugged  away  to  the  west, 
the  greenhorns  and  rounders  went  up  and  staked 
Bonanza. 

But  the  Northland  was  not  yet  done  with  its  joke. 
When  fall  came  on  and  the  heroes  returned  to  Forty 
Mile  and  to  Circle  City,  they  listened  calmly  to  the 
up-river  tales  of  Siwash  discoveries  and  loafers'  pros 
pects,  and  shook  their  heads.  They  judged  by  the 


200  GOLD  HUNTERS  OF  THE  NORTH 

caliber  of  the  men  interested,  and  branded  it  a  bunco 
game.  But  glowing  reports  continued  to  trickle 
down  the  Yukon,  and  a  few  of  the  old-timers  went  up 
to  see.  They  looked  over  the  ground,  —  the  unlike- 
liest  place  for  gold  in  all  their  experience,  —  and  they 
went  down  the  river  again,  "leaving  it  to  the  Swedes." 

Again  the  Northland  turned  the  tables.  The 
Alaskan  gold  hunter  is  proverbial,  not  so  much  for 
his  unveracity,  as  for  his  inability  to  tell  the  precise 
truth.  In  a  country  of  exaggerations,  he  likewise  is 
prone  to  hyperbolic  description  of  things  actual. 
But  when  it  came  to  Klondike,  he  could  not  stretch 
the  truth  as  fast  as  the  truth  itself  stretched.  Carmack 
first  got  a  dollar  pan.  He  lied  when  he  said  it  was 
two  dollars  and  a  half.  And  when  those  who 
doubted  him  did  get  two-and-a-half  pans,  they  said 
they  were  getting  an  ounce,  and  lo !  ere  the  lie  had 
fairly  started  on  its  way,  they  were  getting,  not  one 
ounce,  but  five  ounces.  This  they  claimed  was  six 
ounces;  but  when  they  filled  a  pan  of  dirt  to  prove 
the  lie,  they  washed  out  twelve  ounces.  And  so  it 
went.  They  continued  valiantly  to  lie,  but  the  truth 
continued  to  outrun  them. 

But  the  Northland's  hyperborean  laugh  was  not 


GOLD  HUNTERS  OF  THE  NORTH  201 

yet  ended.  When  Bonanza  was  staked  from  mouth 
to  source,  those  who  had  failed  "to  get  in,"  disgrun 
tled  and  sore,  went  up  the  "pups"  and  feeders. 
Eldorado  was  one  of  these  feeders,  and  many  men, 
after  locating  on  it,  turned  their  backs  upon  their 
claims  and  never  gave  them  a  second  thought.  One 
man  sold  a  half-interest  in  five  hundred  feet  of  it 
for  a  sack  of  flour.  Other  owners  wandered  around 
trying  to  bunco  men  into  buying  them  out  for  a  song. 
And  then  Eldorado  "showed  up."  It  was  far, 
far  richer  than  Bonanza,  with  an  average  value  of  a 
thousand  dollars  a  foot  to  every  foot  of  it. 

A  Swede  named  Charley  Anderson  had  been  at 
work  on  Miller  Creek  the  year  of  the  strike,  and 
arrived  in  Dawson  with  a  few  hundred  dollars.  Two 
miners,  who  had  staked  No.  29  Eldorado,  decided 
that  he  was  the  proper  man  upon  whom  to  "  unload." 
He  was  too  canny  to  approach  sober,  so  at  consider 
able  expense  they  got  him  drunk.  Even  then  it  was 
hard  work,  but  they  kept  him  befuddled  for  several 
days,  and  finally  inveigled  him  into  buying  No.  29 
for  $750.  When  Anderson  sobered  up,  he  wept  at 
his  folly,  and  pleaded  to  have  his  money  back.  But 
the  men  who  had  duped  him  were  hard-hearted. 


202  GOLD  HUNTERS  OF  THE  NORTH 

They  laughed  at  him,  and  kicked  themselves  for 
not  having  tapped  him  for  a  couple  of  hundred  more. 
Nothing  remained  for  Anderson  but  to  work  the  worth 
less  ground.  This  he  did,  and  out  of  it  he  took  over 
three-quarters  of  a  million  of  dollars. 

It  was  not  till  Frank  Dinsmore,  who  already  had 
big  holdings  on  Birch  Creek,  took  a  hand,  that  the 
old-timers  developed  faith  in  the  new  diggings. 
Dinsmore  received  a  letter  from  a  man  on  the  spot, 
calling  it  "the  biggest  thing  in  the  world,"  and  har 
nessed  his  dogs  and  went  up  to  investigate.  And 
when  he  sent  a  letter  back,  saying  that  he  had  "never 
seen  anything  like  it,"  Circle  City  for  the  first  time 
believed,  and  at  once  was  precipitated  one  of  the  wild 
est  stampedes  the  country  had  ever  seen  or  ever  will 
see.  Every  dog  was  taken,  many  went  without 
dogs,  and  even  the  women  and  children  and  weak 
lings  hit  the  three  hundred  miles  of  ice  through  the 
long  Arctic  night  for  the  biggest  thing  in  the  world.  It 
is  related  that  but  twenty  people,  mostly  cripples  and 
unable  to  travel,  were  left  in  Circle  City  when  the 
smoke  of  the  last  sled  disappeared  up  the  Yukon. 

Since  that  time  gold  has  been  discovered  in  all 
manner  of  places,  under  the  grass  roots  of  the  hill- 


GOLD  HUNTERS  OF  THE  NORTH  203 

side  benches,  in  the  bottom  of  Monte  Cristo  Island, 
and  in  the  sands  of  the  sea  at  Nome.  And  now  the 
gold  hunter  who  knows  his  business  shuns  the  "fa 
vorable  looking"  spots,  confident  in  his  hard-won 
knowledge  that  he  will  find  the  most  gold  in  the  least 
likely  place.  This  is  sometimes  adduced  to  support 
the  theory  that  the  gold  hunters,  rather  than  the  ex 
plorers,  are  the  men  who  will  ultimately  win  to  the 
Pole.  Who  knows  ?  It  is  in  their  blood,  and  they 
are  capable  of  it. 

PIEDMONT,  CALIFORNIA, 
February,  1902. 


FOMA  GORDYEEFF 


FOMA  GORDYEEFF 

What,  without  asking,  hither  hurried  Whence? 
And,  without  asking,  Whither  hurried  hence  ! 
Oh,  many  a  Cup  of  this  forbidden  Wine 
Must  drown  the  memory  of  that  insolence  !  " 


"T-^OMA  GORDYEEFF"  is  a  big  book  — 
fi  not  only  is  the  breadth  of  Russia  in  it, 
but  the  expanse  of  life.  Yet,  though  in 
each  land,  in  this  world  of  marts  and  exchanges,  this 
age  of  trade  and  traffic,  passionate  figures  rise  up  and 
demand  of  life  what  its  fever  is,  in  "  Foma  Gordyeeff" 
it  is  a  Russian  who  so  rises  up  and  demands.  For 
Gorky,  the  Bitter  One,  is  essentially  a  Russian  in 
his  grasp  on  the  facts  of  life  and  in  his  treatment. 
All  the  Russian  self-analysis  and  insistent  intro 
spection  are  his.  And,  like  all  his  brother  Russians, 
ardent,  passionate  protest  impregnates  his  work. 
There  is  a  purpose  to  it.  He  writes  because  he  has 
something  to  say  which  the  world  should  hear. 
From  that  clenched  fist  of  his,  light  and  airy  ro 
mances,  pretty  and  sweet  and  beguiling,  do  not  flow, 

207 


208  FOMA  GORDYEEFF 

but  realities  —  yes,  big  and  brutal  and  repulsive,  but 
real. 

He  raises  the  cry  of  the  miserable  and  the  de 
spised,  and  in  a  masterly  arraignment  of  commercial 
ism,  protests  against  social  conditions,  against  the 
grinding  of  the  faces  of  the  poor  and  weak,  and  the 
self-pollution  of  the  rich  and  strong,  in  their  mad 
lust  for  place  and  power.  It  is  to  be  doubted 
strongly  if  the  average  bourgeois,  smug  and  fat  and 
prosperous,  can  understand  this  man  Foma  Gor- 
dyeefF.  The  rebellion  in  his  blood  is  something  to 
which  their  own  does  not  thrill.  To  them  it  will 
be  inexplicable  that  this  man,  with  his  health  and 
his  millions,  could  not  go  on  living  as  his  class  lived, 
keeping  regular  hours  at  desk  and  stock  exchange, 
driving  close  contracts,  underbidding  his  competitors, 
and  exulting  in  the  business  disasters  of  his  fellows. 
It  would  appear  so  easy,  and,  after  such  a  life,  well 
appointed  and  eminently  respectable,  he  could  die. 
"Ah,"  Foma  will  interrupt  rudely,  —  he  is  given 
to  rude  interruptions,  —  "if  to  die  and  disappear  is 
the  end  of  these  money-grubbing  years,  why  money- 
grub?"  And  the  bourgeois  whom  he  rudely  inter 
rupted  will  not  understand.  Nor  did  Mayakin 


FOMA  GORDY£EFF  209 

understand  as  he  labored  holily  with  his  wayward 
godson. 

"Why  do  you  brag  ?"  Foma  bursts  out  upon  him. 
"What  have  you  to  brag  about  ?  Your  son  —  where 
is  he  ?  Your  daughter  —  what  is  she  ?  Ekh,  you 
manager  of  life !  Come,  now,  you're  clever,  you 
know  everything  —  tell  me,  why  do  you  live  ?  Why 
do  you  accumulate  money  ?  Aren't  you  going  to 
die  ?  Well,  what  then  ?"  And  May  akin  finds  him 
self  speechless  and  without  answer,  but  unshaken 
and  unconvinced. 

Receiving  by  heredity  the  fierce,  bull-like  nature 
of  his  father  plus  the  passive  indomitableness  and 
groping  spirit  of  his  mother,  Foma,  proud  and  re 
bellious,  is  repelled  by  the  selfish,  money-seeking 
environment  into  which  he  is  born.  Ignat,  his  father, 
and  Mayakin,  the  godfather,  and  all  the  horde  of 
successful  merchants  singing  the  paean  of  the  strong 
and  the  praises  of  merciless,  remorseless  laissez 
faire,  cannot  entice  him.  Why  ?  he  demands. 
This  is  a  nightmare,  this  life !  It  is  without  sig 
nificance  !  What  does  it  all  mean  ?  What  is  there 
underneath  ?  What  is  the  meaning  of  that  which  is 
underneath  ? 


2io  FOMA  GORDYEEFF 

"You  do  well  to  pity  people,"  Ignat  tells  Foma, 
the  boy,  "only  you  must  use  judgment  with  your 
pity.  First  consider  the  man,  find  out  what  he  is 
like,  what  use  can  be  made  of  him;  and  if  you  see 
that  he  is  a  strong  and  capable  man,  help  him  if 
you  like.  But  if  a  man  is  weak,  not  inclined  to 
work  —  spit  upon  him  and  go  your  way.  And  you 
must  know  that  when  a  man  complains  about  every 
thing,  and  cries  out  and  groans,  —  he  is  not  worth 
more  than  two  kopeks,  he  is  not  worthy  of  pity,  and 
will  be  no  use  to  you  if  you  do  help  him." 

Such  the  frank  and  militant  commercialism,  bel 
lowed  out  between  glasses  of  strong  liquor.  Now 
comes  Mayakin,  speaking  softly  and  without  satire: 

"  Eh,  my  boy,  what  is  a  beggar  ?  A  beggar  is  a 
man  who  is  forced,  by  fate,  to  remind  us  of  Christ; 
he  is  Christ's  brother;  he  is  the  bell  of  the  Lord, 
and  rings  in  life  for  the  purpose  of  awakening  our 
conscience,  of  stirring  up  the  satiety  of  man's  flesh. 
He  stands  under  the  window  and  sings,  '  For  Christ's 
sa-ake !'  and  by  that  chant  he  reminds  us  of  Christ, 
of  His  holy  command  to  help  our  neighbor.  But 
men  have  so  ordered  their  lives  that  it  is  utterly 
impossible  for  them  to  act  in  accordance  with  Christ's 


FOMA  GORDYEEFF  211 

teaching,  and  Jesus  Christ  has  become  entirely  super 
fluous  to  us.  Not  once,  but,  in  all  probability,  a 
thousand  times,  we  have  given  Him  over  to  be 
crucified,  but  still  we  cannot  banish  Him  from  our 
lives  so  long  as  His  poor  brethren  sing  His  name  in 
the  streets  and  remind  us  of  Him.  And  so  now  we 
have  hit  on  the  idea  of  shutting  up  the  beggars  in 
such  special  buildings,  so  that  they  may  not  roam 
about  the  streets  and  stir  up  our  consciences." 

But  Foma  will  have  none  of  it.  He  is  neither  to 
be  enticed  nor  cajoled.  The  cry  of  his  nature  is  for 
light.  He  must  have  light.  And  in  burning  revolt 
he  goes  seeking  the  meaning  of  life.  "His  thoughts 
embraced  all  those  petty  people  who  toiled  at  hard 
labor.  It  was  strange  —  why  did  they  live  ?  What 
satisfaction  was  it  to  them  to  live  on  the  earth  ? 
All  they  did  was  to  perform  their  dirty,  arduous  toil, 
eat  poorly;  they  were  miserably  clad,  addicted  to 
drunkenness.  One  was  sixty  years  old,  but  he  still 
toiled  side  by  side  with  young  men.  And  they  all 
presented  themselves  to  Foma's  imagination  as  a 
huge  heap  of  worms,  who  were  swarming  over  the 
earth  merely  to  eat." 

He  becomes  the  living  interrogation  of  life.     He 


212  FOMA  GORDYEEFF 

cannot  begin  living  until  he  knows  what  living 
means,  and  he  seeks  its  meaning  vainly.  "Why 
should  I  try  to  live  life  when  I  do  not  know  what 
life  is?"  he  objects  when  Mayakin  strives  with  him 
to  return  and  manage  his  business.  Why  should 
men  fetch  and  carry  for  him  ?  be  slaves  to  him 
and  his  money  ? 

"Work  is  not  everything  to  a  man,"  he  says; 
"it  is  not  true  that  justification  lies  in  work.  .  .  . 
Some  people  never  do  any  work  at  all,  all  their  lives 
long  —  yet  they  live  better  than  the  toilers.  Why 
is  that  ?  And  what  justification  have  I  ?  And  how 
will  all  the  people  who  give  their  orders  justify  them 
selves  ?  What  have  they  lived  for  ?  But  my  idea 
is  that  everybody  ought,  without  fail,  to  know  solidly 
what  he  is  living  for.  Is  it  possible  that  a  man  is 
born  to  toil,  accumulate  money,  build  a  house,  beget 
children,  and  —  die?  No;  life  means  something  in 
itself.  ...  A  man  has  been  born,  has  lived,  has 
died  —  why  ?  All  of  us  must  consider  why  we  are 
living,  by  God,  we  must !  There  is  no  sense  in  our 
life  —  there  is  no  sense  at  all.  Some  are  rich — 
they  have  money  enough  for  a  thousand  men  all  to 
themselves  —  and  they  live  without  occupation ; 


FOMA  GORDYEEFF  213 

others  bow  their  backs  in  toil  all  their  life,  and  they 
haven't  a  penny." 

But  Foma  can  only  be  destructive.  He  is  not 
constructive.  The  dim  groping  spirit  of  his  mother 
and  the  curse  of  his  environment  press  too  heavily 
upon  him,  and  he  is  crushed  to  debauchery  and 
madness.  He  does  not  drink  because  liquor  tastes 
good  in  his  mouth.  In  the  vile  companions  who 
purvey  to  his  baser  appetites  he  finds  no  charm. 
It  is  all  utterly  despicable  and  sordid,  but  thither 
his  quest  leads  him  and  he  follows  the  quest.  He 
knows  that  everything  is  wrong,  but  he  cannot 
right  it,  cannot  tell  why.  He  can  only  attack  and 
demolish.  "What  justification  have  you  all  in  the 
sight  of  God  ?  Why  do  you  live  ?"  he  demands  of 
the  conclave  of  merchants,  of  life's  successes.  "  You 
have  not  constructed  life  —  you  have  made  a  cess 
pool  !  You  have  disseminated  filth  and  stifling  ex 
halations  by  your  deeds.  Have  you  any  conscience  ? 
Do  you  remember  God  ?  A  five-kopek  piece  — 
that  is  your  God !  But  you  have  expelled  your 
conscience !" 

Like  the  cry  of  Isaiah,  "Go  to,  now,  ye  rich  men, 
weep  and  howl  for  your  misfortunes  that  shall  come 


2i4  FOMA  GORDYEEFF 

upon  you,"  is  Foma's:  "You  bloodsuckers!  You 
live  on  other  people's  strength ;  you  work  with  other 
people's  hands  !  For  all  this  you  shall  be  made  to 
pay  !  You  shall  perish  —  you  shall  be  called  to  ac 
count  for  all !  For  all  —  to  the  last  little  teardrop  !" 

Stunned  by  this  puddle  of  life,  unable  to  make 
sense  of  it,  Foma  questions,  and  questions  vainly, 
whether  of  Sofya  Medynskv  in  her  drawing-room  of 
beauty,  or  in  the  foulest  depths  of  the  first  chance 
courtesan's  heart.  Linboff,  whose  books  contradict 
one  another,  cannot  help  him ;  nor  can  the  pilgrims  on 
crowded  steamers,  nor  the  verse  writers  and  harlots 
in  dives  and  boozing-kens.  And  so,  wondering, 
pondering,  perplexed,  amazed,  whirling  through  the 
mad  whirlpool  of  life,  dancing  the  dance  of  death, 
groping  for  the  nameless,  indefinite  something,  the 
magic  formula,  the  essence,  the  intrinsic  fact,  the 
flash  of  light  through  the  murk  arid  dark,  —  the 
rational  sanction  for  existence,  in  short,  —  Foma 
Gordyeeff  goes  down  to  madness  and  death. 

It  is  not  a  pretty  book,  but  it  is  a  masterful  inter 
rogation  of  life  —  not  of  life  universal,  but  of  life 
particular,  the  social  life  of  to-day.  It  is  not  nice; 
neither  is  the  social  life  of  to-day  nice.  One  lays 


FOMA  GORDYEEFF  215 

the  book  down  sick  at  heart  —  sick  for  life  with  all 
its  "lyings  and  its  lusts."  But  it  is  a  healthy  book. 
So  fearful  is  its  portrayal  of  social  disease,  so  ruth 
less  its  stripping  of  the  painted  charms  from  vice, 
that  its  tendency  cannot  but  be  strongly  for  good. 
It  is  a  goad,  to  prick  sleeping  human  consciences 
awake  and  drive  them  into  the  battle  for  humanity. 

But  no  story  is  told,  nothing  is  finished,  some 
one  will  object.  Surely,  when  Sasha  leaped  over 
board  and  swam  to  Foma,  something  happened.  It 
was  pregnant  with  possibilities.  Yet  it  was  not 
finished,  was  not  decisive.  She  left  him  to  go  with 
the  son  of  a  rich  vodka-maker.  And  all  that  was 
best  in  Sofya  Medynsky  was  quickened  when  she 
looked  upon  Foma  with  the  look  of  the  Mother- 
Woman.  She  might  have  been  a  power  for  good  in 
his  life,  she  might  have  shed  light  into  it  and  lifted 
him  up  to  safety  and  honor  and  understanding. 
Yet  she  went  away  next  day,  and  he  never  saw  her 
again.  No  story  is  told,  nothing  is  finished. 

Ah,  but  surely  the  story  of  Foma  Gordyeeff  is 
told;  his  life  is  finished,  as  lives  are  being  finished 
each  day  around  us.  Besides,  it  is  the  way  of  life, 
and  the  art  of  Gorky  is  the  art  of  realism.  But 


2i 6  FOMA  GORDYEEFF 

it  is  a  less  tedious  realism  than  that  of  Tolstoy  or 
Turgenev.  It  lives  and  breathes  from  page  to  page 
with  a  swing  and  dash  and  go  that  they  rarely  attain. 
Their  mantle  has  fallen  on  his  young  shoulders,  and 
he  promises  to  wear  it  royally. 

Even  so,  but  so  helpless,  hopeless,  terrible  is  this 
life  of  Foma  GordyeefF  that  we  would  be  filled  with 
profound  sorrow  for  Gorky  did  we  not  know  that 
he  has  come  up  out  of  the  Valley  of  Shadow.  That 
he  hopes,  we  know,  else  would  he  not  now  be  fester 
ing  in  a  Russian  prison  because  he  is  brave  enough 
to  live  the  hope  he  feels.  He  knows  life,  why  and 
how  it  should  be  lived.  And  in  conclusion,  this  one 
thing  is  manifest :  Foma  GordyeefF  is  no  mere  state 
ment  of  an  intellectual  problem.  For  as  he  lived 
and  interrogated  living,  so,  in  sweat  and  blood  and 
travail,  has  Gorky  lived. 

PIEDMONT,  CALIFORNIA, 
November,  1901. 


THESE  BONES   SHALL  RISE  AGAIN 


^\ 

f   UNIVERSITY   I 


OF 


THESE  BONES  SHALL  RISE  AGAIN 

RUDYARD  KIPLING,  "prophet  of  blood  and 
vulgarity,  prince  of  ephemerals  and  idol  of 
the  unelect,"  —  as  a  Chicago  critic  chortles, 
—  is  dead.  It  is  true.  He  is  dead,  dead  and  buried. 
And  a  fluttering,  chirping  host  of  men,  little  men 
and  unseeing  men,  have  heaped  him  over  with  the 
uncut  leaves  of  "Kim,"  wrapped  him  in  "Stalky  & 
Co."  for  winding  sheet,  and  for  headstone  reared 
his  unconventional  lines,  "The  Lesson."  It  was  very 
easy.  The  simplest  thing  in  the  world.  And  the 
fluttering,  chirping  gentlemen  are  rubbing  their 
hands  in  amaze  and  wondering  why  they  did  not  do 
it  long  ago,  it  was  so  very,  very  simple. 

But  the  centuries  to  come,  of  which  the  fluttering, 
chirping  gentlemen  are  prone  to  talk  largely,  will 
have  something  to  say  in  the  matter.  And  when 
they,  the  future  centuries,  quest  back  to  the  nine 
teenth  century  to  find  what  manner  of  century  it 
was ;  —  to  find,  not  what  the  people  of  the  nine 
teenth  century  thought  they  thought,  but  what  they 

319 


220    THESE   BONES   SHALL  RISE  AGAIN 

really  thought,  not  what  they  thought  they  ought  to 
do,  but  what  they  really  did  do,  then  a  certain  man, 
Kipling,  will  be  read  —  and  read  with  understand 
ing.  "They  thought  they  read  him  with  under 
standing,  those  people  of  the  nineteenth  century," 
the  future  centuries  will  say ;  "  and  then  they  thought 
there  was  no  understanding  in  him,  and  after  that 
they  did  not  know  what  they  thought." 

But  this  is  over-severe.  It  applies  only  to  that 
class  which  serves  a  function  somewhat  similar  to 
that  served  by  the  populace  of  old  time  in  Rome. 
This  is  the  unstable,  mob-minded  mass,  which  sits 
on  the  fence,  ever  ready  to  fall  this  side  or  that 
and  indecorously  clamber  back  again;  which  puts 
a  Democratic  administration  into  office  one  election, 
and  a  Republican  the  next;  which  discovers  and  lifts 
up  a  prophet  to-day  that  it  may  stone  him  to 
morrow;  which  clamors  for  the  book  everybody  else 
is  reading,  for  no  reason  under  the  sun  save  that 
everybody  else  is  reading  it.  This  is  the  class  of 
whim  and  caprice,  of  fad  and  vogue,  the  unstable, 
incoherent,  mob-mouthed,  mob-minded  mass,  the 
"monkey-folk,"  if  you  please,  of  these  latter  days. 
Now  it  may  be  reading  "The  Eternal  City." 


THESE   BONES   SHALL  RISE  AGAIN    221 

Yesterday  it  was  reading  "The  Master-Christian," 
and  some  several  days  before  that  it  was  reading 
Kipling.  Yes,  almost  to  his  shame  be  it,  these  folk 
were  reading  him.  But  it  was  not  his  fault.  If 
he  depended  upon  them  he  well  deserves  to  be 
dead  and  buried  and  never  to  rise  again.  But  to 
them,  let  us  be  thankful,  he  never  lived.  They 
thought  he  lived,  but  he  was  as  dead  then  as  he  is 
now  and  as  he  always  will  be. 

He  could  not  help  it  because  he  became  the 
vogue,  and  it  is  easily  understood.  When  he  lay  ill, 
fighting  in  close  grapples  with  death,  those  who 
knew  him  were  grieved  They  were  many,  and  in 
many  voices,  to  the  rim  of  the  Seven  Seas,  they 
spoke  their  grief.  Whereupon,  and  with  celerity, 
the  mob-minded  mass  began  to  inquire  as  to  this 
man  whom  so  many  mourned.  If  everybody  else 
mourned,  it  were  fit  that  they  mourn  too.  So  a  vast 
wail  went  up.  Each  was  a  spur  to  the  other's  grief, 
and  each  began  privately  to  read  this  man  they  had 
never  read  and  publicly  to  proclaim  this  man  they 
had  always  read.  And  straightaway  next  day  they 
drowned  their  grief  in  a  sea  of  historical  romance 
and  forgot  all  about  him.  The  reaction  was  inevi- 


222    THESE  BONES   SHALL   RISE  AGAIN 

table.  Emerging  from  the  sea  into  which  they  had 
plunged,  they  became  aware  that  they  had  so  soon 
forgotten  him,  and  would  have  been  ashamed,  had 
not  the  fluttering,  chirping  men  said,  "Come,  let  us 
bury  him."  And  they  put  him  in  a  hole,  quickly, 
out  of  their  sight. 

And  when  they  have  crept  into  their  own  little 
holes,  and  smugly  laid  themselves  down  in  their  last 
long  sleep,  the  future  centuries  will  roll  the  stone 
away  and  he  will  come  forth  again.  For  be  it 
known :  That  man  of  us  is  imperishable  who  makes 
his  century  imperishable.  That  man  of  us  who 
seizes  upon  the  salient  facts  of  our  life,  who  tells 
what  we  thought,  what  we  were,  and  for  what  we 
stood  —  that  man  shall  be  the  mouthpiece  to  the 
centuries,  and  so  long  as  they  listen  he  shall  endure. 

We  remember  the  caveman.  We  remember  him 
because  he  made  his  century  imperishable.  But, 
unhappily,  we  remember  him  dimly,  in  a  collective 
sort  of  way,  because  he  memorialized  his  century 
dimly,  in  a  collective  sort  of  way.  He  had  no 
written  speech,  so  he  left  us  rude  scratchings  of 
beasts  and  things,  cracked  marrow-bones,  and  weap 
ons  of  stone.  It  was  the  best  expression  of  which 


THESE   BONES   SHALL   RISE   AGAIN     223 

he  was  capable.  Had  he  scratched  his  own  partic 
ular  name  with  the  scratchings  of  beasts  and  things, 
stamped  his  cracked  marrow-bones  with  his  own 
particular  seal,  trade-marked  his  weapons  of  stone 
with  his  own  particular  device,  that  particular  man 
would  we  remember.  But  he  did  the  best  he  could, 
and  we  remember  him  as  best  we  may. 

Homer  takes  his  place  with  Achilles  and  the 
Greek  and  Trojan  heroes.  Because  he  remembered 
them,  we  remember  him.  Whether  he  be  one  or  a 
dozen  men,  or  a  dozen  generations  of  men,  we 
remember  him.  And  so  long  as  the  name  of  Greece 
is  known  on  the  lips  of  men,  so  long  will  the  name  of 
Homer  be  known.  There  are  many  such  names, 
linked  with  their  times,  which  have  come  down  to 
us,  many  more  which  will  yet  go  down;  and  to 
them,  in  token  that  we  have  lived,  must  we  add 
some  few  of  our  own. 

Dealing  only  with  the  artist,  be  it  understood, 
only  those  artists  will  go  down  who  have  spoken 
true  of  us.  Their  truth  must  be  the  deepest  and 
most  significant,  their  voices  clear  and  strong,  definite 
and  coherent.  Half-truths  and  partial-truths  will 
not  do,  nor  will  thin  piping  voices  and  quavering 


224    THESE   BONES   SHALL   RISE  AGAIN 

lays.  There  must  be  the  cosmic  quality  in  what 
they  sing.  They  must  seize  upon  and  press  into 
enduring  art-forms  the  vital  facts  of  our  existence. 
They  must  tell  why  we  have  lived,  for  without  any 
reason  for  living,  depend  upon  it,  in  the  time  to 
come,  it  will  be  as  though  we  had  never  lived.  Nor 
are  the  things  that  were  true  of  the  people  a  thou 
sand  years  or  so  ago  true  of  us  to-day.  The  ro 
mance  of  Homer's  Greece  is  the  romance  of  Homer's 
Greece.  That  is  undeniable.  It  is  not  our  ro 
mance.  And  he  who  in  our  time  sings  the  romance 
of  Homer's  Greece  cannot  expect  to  sing  it  so  well 
as  Homer  did,  nor  will  he  be  singing  about  us  or 
our  romance  at  all.  A  machine  age  is  something 
quite  different  from  an  heroic  age.  What  is  true  of 
rapid-fire  guns,  stock-exchanges,  and  electric  motors, 
cannot  possibly  be  true  of  hand-flung  javelins  and 
whirring  chariot  wheels.  Kipling  knows  this.  He 
has  been  telling  it  to  us  all  his  life,  living  it  all  his 
life  in  the  work  he  has  done. 

What  the  Anglo-Saxon  has  done,  he  has  me 
morialized.  And  by  Anglo-Saxon  is  not  meant 
merely  the  people  of  that  tight  little  island  on  the 
edge  of  the  Western  Ocean.  Anglo-Saxon  stands 


THESE   BONES   SHALL  RISE  AGAIN    225 

for  the  English-speaking  people  of  all  the  world, 
who,  in  forms  and  institutions  and  traditions,  are 
more  peculiarly  and  definitely  English  than  any 
thing  else.  This  people  Kipling  has  sung.  Their 
sweat  and  blood  and  toil  have  been  the  motives  of 
his  songs;  but  underlying  all  the  motives  of  his 
songs  is  the  motive  of  motives,  the  sum  of  them  all 
and  something  more,  which  is  one  with  what  under 
lies  all  the  Anglo-Saxon  sweat  and  blood  and  toil; 
namely,  the  genius  of  the  race.  And  this  is  the 
cosmic  quality.  Both  that  which  is  true  of  the  race 
for  all  time,  and  that  which  is  true  of  the  race  for 
all  time  applied  to  this  particular  time,  he  has  caught 
up  and  pressed  into  his  art-forms.  He  has  caught 
the  dominant  note  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  and  pressed 
it  into  wonderful  rhythms  which  cannot  be  sung  out 
in  a  day  and  which  will  not  be  sung  out  in  a  day. 

The  Anglo-Saxon  is  a  pirate,  a  land  robber  and  a 
sea  robber.  Underneath  his  thin  coating  of  culture, 
he  is  what  he  was  in  Morgan's  time,  in  Drake's 
time,  in  William's  time,  in  Alfred's  time.  The  blood 
and  the  tradition  of  Hengist  and  Horsa  are  in  his 
veins.  In  battle  he  is  subject  to  the  blood  lusts  of 
the  Berserkers  of  old.  Plunder  and  booty  fascinate 


226    THESE   BONES   SHALL  RISE  AGAIN 

him  immeasurably.  The  schoolboy  of  to-day  dreams 
the  dream  of  Clive  and  Hastings.  The  Anglo- 
Saxon  is  strong  of  arm  and  heavy  of  hand,  and  he 
possesses  a  primitive  brutality  all  his  own.  There 
is  a  discontent  in  his  blood,  an  unsatisfaction  that 
will  not  let  him  rest,  but  sends  him  adventuring  over 
the  sea  and  among  the  lands  in  the  midst  of  the 
sea.  He  does  not  know  when  he  is  beaten,  where 
fore  the  term  "bull-dog"  is  attached  to  him,  so  that 
all  may  know  his  unreasonableness.  He  has  "some 
care  as  to  the  purity  of  his  ways,  does  not  wish  for 
strange  gods,  nor  juggle  with  intellectual  phantas 
magoria."  He  loves  freedom,  but  is  dictatorial  to 
others,  is  self-willed,  has  boundless  energy,  and 
does  things  for  himself.  He  is  also  a  master  of 
matter,  an  organizer  of  law,  and  an  administrator 
of  justice. 

And  in  the  nineteenth  century  he  has  lived  up  to 
his  reputation.  Being  the  nineteenth  century  and 
no  other  century,  and  in  so  far  different  from  all 
other  centuries,  he  has  expressed  himself  differently. 
But  blood  will  tell,  and  in  the  name  of  God,  the 
Bible,  and  Democracy,  he  has  gone  out  over  the 
earth,  possessing  himself  of  broad  lands  and  fat 


THESE   BONES   SHALL  RISE  AGAIN    227 

revenues,  and  conquering  by  virtue  of  his  sheer 
pluck  and  enterprise  and  superior  machinery. 

Now  the  future  centuries,  seeking  to  find  out 
what  the  nineteenth-century  Anglo-Saxon  was  and 
what  were  his  works,  will  have  small  concern  with 
what  he  did  not  do  and  what  he  would  have  liked 
to  do.  These  things  he  did  do,  and  for  these  things 
will  he  be  remembered.  His  claim  on  posterity 
will  be  that  in  the  nineteenth  century  he  mastered 
matter;  his  twentieth-century  claim  will  be,  in  the 
highest  probability,  that  he  organized  life  —  but 
that  will  be  sung  by  the  twentieth-century  Kiplings 
or  the  twenty-first-century  Kiplings.  Rudyard  Kip 
ling  of  the  nineteenth  century  has  sung  of  "things 
as  they  are."  He  has  seen  life  as  it  is,  "taken  it  up 
squarely,"  in  both  his  hands,  and  looked  upon  it. 
What  better  preachment  upon  the  Anglo-Saxon  and 
what  he  has  done  can  be  had  than  "The  Bridge 
Builders"?  what  better  appraisement  than  "The 
White  Man's  Burden"?  As  for  faith  and  clean 
ideals,  —  not  of  "children  and  gods,  but  men  in  a 
world  of  men,"  —  who  has  preached  them  better 
than  he  ? 

Primarily,    Kipling   has    stood    for    the    doer    as 


228    THESE   BONES   SHALL  RISE  AGAIN 

opposed  to  the  dreamer  —  the  doer,  who  lists  not  to 
idle  songs  of  empty  days,  but  who  goes  forth  and 
does  things,  with  bended  back  and  sweated  brow 
and  work-hardened  hands.  The  most  characteristic 
thing  about  Kipling  is  his  love  of  actuality,  his  in 
tense  practicality,  his  proper  and  necessary  respect 
for  the  hard-headed,  hard-fisted  fact.  And,  above 
all,  he  has  preached  the  gospel  of  work,  and  as 
potently  as  Carlyle  ever  preached.  For  he  has 
preached  it  not  only  to  those  in  the  high  places,  but 
to  the  common  men,  to  the  great  sweating  throng 
of  common  men  who  hear  and  understand  yet  stand 
agape  at  Carlyle's  turgid  utterance.  Do  the  thing 
to  your  hand,  and  do  it  with  all  your  might.  Never 
mind  what  the  thing  is;  so  long  as  it  is  something. 
Do  it.  Do  it  and  remember  Tomlinson,  sexless  and 
soulless  Tomlinson,  who  was  denied  at  Heaven's  gate. 
The  blundering  centuries  have  perseveringly 
pottered  and  groped  through  the  dark;  but  it  re 
mained  for  Kipling's  century  to  roll  in  the  sun,  to 
formulate,  in  other  words,  the  reign  of  law.  And 
of  the  artists  in  Kipling's  century,  he  of  them  all  has 
driven  the  greater  measure  of  law  in  the  more  con 
summate  speech :  — 


THESE  BONES   SHALL  RISE  AGAIN    229 

Keep  ye  the  Law  —  be  swift  in  all  obedience. 

Clear  the  land  of  evil,  drive  the  road  and  bridge  the  ford. 

Make  ye  sure  to  each  his  own 

That  he  reap  what  he  hath  sown; 
By  the  peace  among  Our  peoples  let  men  know  we  serve  the  Lord. 

—  And  so  it  runs,  from  Me  An  draw's  "Law,  Order, 
Duty,  and  Restraint,"  to  his  last  least  line,  whether 
of  "The  Vampire"  or  "The  Recessional."  And 
no  prophet  out  of  Israel  has  cried  out  more  loudly 
the  sins  of  the  people,  nor  called  them  more  awfully 
to  repent. 

"But  he  is  vulgar,  he  stirs  the  puddle  of  life," 
object  the  fluttering,  chirping  gentlemen,  the  Tom- 
linsonian  men.  Well,  and  isn't  life  vulgar  ?  Can 
you  divorce  the  facts  of  life  ?  Much  of  good  is 
there,  and  much  of  ill;  but  who  may  draw  aside 
his  garment  and  say,  "I  am  none  of  them"? 
Can  you  say  that  the  part  is  greater  than  the  whole  ? 
that  the  whole  is  more  or  less  than  the  sum  of  the 
parts  ?  As  for  the  puddle  of  life,  the  stench  is 
offensive  to  you  ?  Well,  and  what  then  ?  Do  you 
not  live  in  it  ?  Why  do  you  not  make  it  clean  ? 
Do  you  clamor  for  a  filter  to  make  clean  only  your 
own  particular  portion  ?  And,  made  clean,  are  you 


230    THESE   BONES   SHALL   RISE  AGAIN 

wroth  because  Kipling  has  stirred  it  muddy  again  ? 
At  least  he  has  stirred  it  healthily,  with  steady  vigor 
and  good-will.  He  has  not  brought  to  the  surface 
merely  its  dregs,  but  its  most  significant  values. 
He  has  told  the  centuries  to  come  of  our  lyings  and 
our  lusts,  but  he  has  also  told  the  centuries  to  come 
of  the  seriousness  which  is  underneath  our  lyings 
and  our  lusts.  And  he  has  told  us,  too,  and  always 
has  he  told  us,  to  be  clean  and  strong  and  to  walk 
upright  and  manlike. 

"But  he  has  no  sympathy,"  the  fluttering  gentle 
men  chirp.  "We  admire  his  art  and  intellectual 
brilliancy,  we  all  admire  his  art  and  intellectual 
brilliancy,  his  dazzling  technique  and  rare  rhyth 
mical  sense;  but  ...  he  is  totally  devoid  of  sym 
pathy."  Dear !  Dear !  What  is  to  be  under 
stood  by  this  ?  Should  he  sprinkle  his  pages  with 
sympathetic  adjectives,  so  many  to  the  paragraph, 
as  the  country  compositor  sprinkles  commas  ?  Surely 
not.  The  little  gentlemen  are  not  quite  so  infinitesi 
mal  as  that.  There  have  been  many  tellers  of  jokes, 
and  the  greater  of  them,  it  is  recorded,  never  smiled 
at  their  own,  not  even  in  the  crucial  moment  when 
the  audience  wavered  between  laughter  and  tears. 


THESE   BONES   SHALL   RISE  AGAIN     231 

And  so  with  Kipling.  Take  the  "Vampire,"  for 
instance.  It  has  been  complained  that  there  is  no 
touch  of  pity  in  it  for  the  man  and  his  ruin,  no  ser 
mon  on  the  lesson  of  it,  no  compassion  for  the 
human  weakness,  no  indignation  at  the  heartless- 
ness.  But  are  we  kindergarten  children  that  the 
tale  be  told  to  us  in  words  of  one  syllable  ?  Or 
are  we  men  and  women,  able  to  read  between  the 
lines  what  Kipling  intended  we  should  read  between 
the  lines?  "For  some  of  him  lived,  but  the  most 
of  him  died. "  Is  there  not  here  all  the  exci 
tation  in  the  world  for  our  sorrow,  our  pity,  our 
indignation  ?  And  what  more  is  the  function  of  art 
than  to  excite  states  of  consciousness  complementary 
to  the  thing  portrayed  ?  The  color  of  tragedy  is 
red.  Must  the  artist  also  paint  in  the  watery  tears 
and  wan-faced  grief?  "For  some  of  him  lived,  but 
the  most  of  him  died"  -can  the  heartache  of  the 
situation  be  conveyed  more  achingly  ?  Or  were  it 
better  that  the  young  man,  some  of  him  alive  but 
most  of  him  dead,  should  come  out  before  the  cur 
tain  and  deliver  a  homily  to  the  weeping  audience  ? 

The  nineteenth  century,  so  far  as  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  is  concerned,  was  remarkable  for  two  great 


232    THESE  BONES   SHALL   RISE  AGAIN 

developments :  the  mastery  of  matter  and  the  ex 
pansion  of  the  race.  Three  great  forces  operated 
in  it :  nationalism,  commercialism,  democracy  — 
the  marshalling  of  the  races,  the  merciless,  remorse 
less  laissez  faire  of  the  dominant  bourgeoisie,  and 
the  practical,  actual  working  government  of  men 
within  a  very  limited  equality.  The  democracy  of 
the  nineteenth  century  is  not  the  democracy  of  which 
the  eighteenth  century  dreamed.  It  is  not  the 
democracy  of  the  Declaration,  but  it  is  what  we  have 
practised  and  lived  what  reconciles  it  to  the  fact  of 
the  "lesser  breeds  without  the  Law." 

It  is  of  these  developments  and  forces  of  the  nine 
teenth  century  that  Kipling  has  sung.  And  the  ro 
mance  of  it  he  has  sung,  that  which  underlies  and 
transcends  objective  endeavor,  which  deals  with  race 
impulses,  race  deeds,  and  race  traditions.  Even 
into  the  steam-laden  speech  of  his  locomotives  has 
he  breathed  our  life,  our  spirit,  our  significance. 
As  he  is  our  mouthpiece,  so  are  they  his  mouth 
pieces.  And  the  romance  of  the  nineteenth-century 
man,  as  he  has  thus  expressed  himself  in  the  nine 
teenth  century,  in  shaft  and  wheel,  in  steel  and 
steam,  in  far  journeying  and  adventuring,  Kipling 


THESE   BONES   SHALL   RISE  AGAIN    233 

has  caught  up  in  wondrous  songs  for  the  future  cen 
turies  to  sing. 

If  the  nineteenth  century  is  the  century  of  the 
Hooligan,  then  is  Kipling  the  voice  of  the  Hooligan 
as  surely  as  he  is  the  voice  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
Who  is  more  representative?  Is  "David  Harum" 
more  representative  of  the  nineteenth  century  ?  Is 
Mary  Johnston,  Charles  Major,  or  Winston  Churchill  ? 
Is  Bret  Harte  ?  William  Dean  Howells  ?  Gilbert 
Parker  ?  Who  of  them  all  is  as  essentially  repre 
sentative  of  nineteenth-century  life  ?  When  Kipling 
is  forgotten,  will  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  be  remem 
bered  for  his  "Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde,"  his 
"Kidnapped,"  and  his  "David  Balfour"  ?  Not  so. 
His  "Treasure  Island"  will  be  a  classic,  to  go  down 
with  "Robinson  Crusoe,"  "Through  the  Looking- 
Glass,"  and  "The  Jungle  Books."  He  will  be 
remembered  for  his  essays,  for  his  letters,  for  his 
philosophy  of  life,  for  himself.  He  will  be  the  well 
beloved,  as  he  has  been  the  well  beloved.  But  his 
will  be  another  claim  upon  posterity  than  what  we 
are  considering.  For  each  epoch  has  its  singer. 
As  Scott  sang  the  swan  song  of  chivalry  and  Dickens 
the  burgher-fear  of  the  rising  merchant  class,  so 


234    THESE   BONES    SHALL   RISE  AGAIN 

Kipling,  as  no  one  else,  has  sung  the  hymn  of  the 
dominant  bourgeoisie,  the  war  march  of  the  white 
man  round  the  world,  the  triumphant  paean  of 
commercialism  and  imperialism.  For  that  will  he 
be  remembered. 

OAKLAND,  CALIFORNIA, 
October,  1901. 


THE  OTHER  ANIMALS 


THE  OTHER   ANIMALS 

AMERICAN  journalism  has  its  moments  of 
fantastic  hysteria,  and  when  it  is  on  the  ram 
page  the  only  thing  for  a  rational  man  to  do 
is  to  climb  a  tree  and  let  the  cataclysm  go  by. 
And  so,  some  time  ago,  when  the  word  nature- 
faker  was  coined,  I,  for  one,  climbed  into 
my  tree  and  stayed  there.  I  happened  to  be  in 
Hawaii  at  the  time,  and  a  Honolulu  reporter  elicited 
the  sentiment  from  me  that  I  thanked  God  I  was 
not  an  authority  on  anything.  This  sentiment  was 
promptly  cabled  to  America  in  an  Associated  Press 
despatch,  whereupon  the  American  press  (possibly 
annoyed  because  I  had  not  climbed  down  out  of 
my  tree)  charged  me  with  paying  for  advertising  by 
cable  at  a  dollar  per  word  —  the  very  human  way  of 
the  American  press,  which,  when  a  man  refuses  to 
come  down  and  be  licked,  makes  faces  at  him. 
But  now  that  the  storm  is  over,  let  us  come  and 


238  THE  OTHER  ANIMALS 

reason  together.  I  have  been  guilty  of  writing  two 
animal-stories  —  two  books  about  dogs.  The  writ 
ing  of  these  two  stories,  on  my  part,  was  in  truth 
a  protest  against  the  "humanizing"  of  animals,  of 
which  it  seemed  to  me  several  "  animal  writers  " 
had  been  profoundly  guilty.  Time  and  again,  and 
many  times,  in  my  narratives,  I  wrote,  speaking  of 
my  dog-heroes:  "He  did  not  think  these  things;  he 
merely  did  them,"  etc.  And  I  did  this  repeatedly, 
to  the  clogging  of  my  narrative  and  in  violation  of 
my  artistic  canons;  and  I  did  it  in  order  to  hammer 
into  the  average  human  understanding  that  these  dog- 
heroes  of  mine  were  not  directed  by  abstract  reason 
ing,  but  by  instinct,  sensation,  and  emotion,  and  by 
simple  reasoning.  Also,  I  endeavored  to  make  my 
stories  in  line  with  the  facts  of  evolution;  I  hewed 
them  to  the  mark  set  by  scientific  research,  and 
awoke,  one  day,  to  find  myself  bundled  neck  and  crop 
into  the  camp  of  the  nature-fakers. 

President  Roosevelt  was  responsible  for  this,  and 
he  tried  and  condemned  me  on  two  counts,  (i)  I 
was  guilty  of  having  a  big,  fighting  bull-dog  whip  a 
wolf-dog.  (2)  I  was  guilty  of  allowing  a  lynx  to  kill 
a  wolf-dog  in  a  pitched  battle.  Regarding  the  second 


THE  OTHER  ANIMALS  239 

count,  President  Roosevelt  was  wrong  in  his  field 
observations  taken  while  reading  my  book.  He  must 
have  read  it  hastily,  for  in  my  story  I  had  the  wolf- 
dog  kill  the  lynx.  Not  only  did  I  have  my  wolf-dog 
kill  the  lynx,  but  I  made  him  eat  the  body  of  the 
lynx  as  well.  Remains  only  the  first  count  on  which 
to  convict  me  of  nature-faking,  and  the  first  count 
does  not  charge  me  with  diverging  from  ascertained 
facts.  It  is  merely  a  statement  of  a  difference  of 
opinion.  President  Roosevelt  does  not  think  a  bull 
dog  can  lick  a  wolf-dog.  I  think  a  bull-dog  can  lick 
a  wolf-dog.  And  there  we  are.  Difference  of  opin 
ion  may  make,  and  does  make,  horse-racing.  I  can 
understand  that  difference  of  opinion  can  make  dog- 
fighting.  But  what  gets  me  is  how  difference  of 
opinion  regarding  the  relative  fighting  merits  of  a 
bull-dog  and  a  wolf-dog  makes  me  a  nature-faker 
and  President  Roosevelt  a  vindicated  and  triumphant 
scientist. 

Then  entered  John  Burroughs  to  clinch  President 
Roosevelt's  judgments.  In  this  alliance  there  is  no 
difference  of  opinion.  That  Roosevelt  can  do  no 
wrong  is  Burroughs's  opinion;  and  that  Burroughs 
is  always  right  is  Roosevelt's  opinion.  Both  are 


24o  THE   OTHER   ANIMALS 

agreed  that  animals  do  not  reason.  They  assert 
that  all  animals  below  man  are  automatons  and  per 
form  actions  only  of  two  sorts  —  mechanical  and 
reflex  —  and  that  in  such  actions  no  reasoning 
enters  at  all.  They  believe  that  man  is  the  only  ani 
mal  capable  of  reasoning  and  that  ever  does  reason. 
This  is  a  view  that  makes  the  twentieth-century 
scientist  smile.  It  is  not  modern  at  all.  It  is  dis 
tinctly  mediaeval.  President  Roosevelt  and  John 
Burroughs,  in  advancing  such  a  view,  are  homocen- 
tric  in  the  same  fashion  that  the  scholastics  of  earlier 
and  darker  centuries  were  homocentric.  Had  the 
world  not  been  discovered  to  be  round  until  after 
the  births  of  President  Roosevelt  and  John  Bur 
roughs,  they  would  have  been  geocentric  as  well  in 
their  theories  of  the  Cosmos.  They  could  not  have 
believed  otherwise.  The  stuff  of  their  minds  is  so 
conditioned.  They  talk  the  argot  of  evolution,  while 
they  no  more  understand  the  essence  and  the  import 
of  evolution  than  does  a  South  Sea  Islander  or  Sir 
Oliver  Lodge  understand  the  noumena  of  radio 
activity. 

Now,  President  Roosevelt  is  an  amateur.     He  may 
know  something  of  statecraft  and  of  big-game  shoot- 


THE  OTHER  ANIMALS  241 

ing;  he  may  be  able  to  kill  a  deer  when  he  sees  it  and 
to  measure  it  and  weigh  it  after  he  has  shot  it;  he 
may  be  able  to  observe  carefully  and  accurately  the 
actions  and  antics  of  tom-tits  and  snipe,  and,  after  he 
has  observed  it,  definitely  and  coherently  to  convey 
the  information  of  when  the  first  chipmunk,  in  a 
certain  year  and  a  certain  latitude  and  longitude, 
came  out  in  the  spring  and  chattered  and  gambolled  — 
but  that  he  should  be  able,  as  an  individual  observer, 
to  analyze  all  animal  life  and  to  synthetize  and  de 
velop  all  that  is  known  of  the  method  and  significance 
of  evolution,  would  require  a  vaster  credulity  for  you 
or  me  to  believe  than  is  required  for  us  to  believe  the 
biggest  whopper  ever  told  by  an  unmitigated  nature- 
faker.  No,  President  Roosevelt  does  not  understand 
evolution,  and  he  does  not  seem  to  have  made  much 
of  an  attempt  to  understand  evolution. 

Remains  John  Burroughs,  who  claims  to  be  a 
thoroughgoing  evolutionist.  Now,  it  is  rather  hard 
for  a  young  man  to  tackle  an  old  man.  It  is  the 
nature  of  young  men  to  be  more  controlled  in  such 
matters,  and  it  is  the  nature  of  old  men,  presuming 
upon  the  wisdom  that  is  very  often  erroneously  as 
sociated  with  age,  to  do  the  tackling.  In  this  present 


242  THE  OTHER  ANIMALS 

question  of  nature-faking,  the  old  men  did  the  tack 
ling,  while  I,  as  one  young  man,  kept  quiet  a  long 
time.  But  here  goes  at  last.  And  first  of  all  let 
Mr.  Burroughs's  position  be  stated,  and  stated  in 
his  words. 

"Why  impute  reason  to  an  animal  if  its  behavior 
can  be  explained  on  the  theory  of  instinct  ?"  Remem 
ber  these  words,  for  they  will  be  referred  to  later.  "  A 
goodly  number  of  persons  seem  to  have  persuaded 
themselves  that  animals  do  reason."  "  But  instinct 
suffices  for  the  animals  .  .  .  they  get  along  very 
well  without  reason."  "Darwin  tried  hard  to  con 
vince  himself  that  animals  do  at  times  reason  in  a 
rudimentary  way;  but  Darwin  was  also  a  much 
greater  naturalist  than  psychologist/'  The  preced 
ing  quotation  is  tantamount,  on  Mr.  Burroughs's  part, 
to  a  flat  denial  that  animals  reason  even  in  a  rudi 
mentary  way.  And  when  Mr.  Burroughs  denies  that 
animals  reason  even  in  a  rudimentary  way,  it  is  equiv 
alent  to  affirming,  in  accord  with  the  first  quota 
tion  in  this  paragraph,  that  instinct  will  explain  every 
animal  act  that  might  be  confounded  with  reason  by 
the  unskilled  or  careless  observer. 

Having  bitten  off  this  large  mouthful,  Mr.  Bur- 


THE  OTHER   ANIMALS  243 

roughs  proceeds  with  serene  and  beautiful  satis 
faction  to  masticate  it  in  the  following  fashion.  He 
cites  a  large  number  of  instances  of  purely  instinctive 
actions  on  the  parts  of  animals,  and  triumphantly  de 
mands  if  they  are  acts  of  reason.  He  tells  of  the 
robin  that  fought  day  after  day  its  reflected  image  in 
a  window-pane;  of  the  birds  in  South  America  that 
were  guilty  of  drilling  clear  through  a  mud  wall, 
which  they  mistook  for  a  solid  clay  bank;  of  the 
beaver  that  cut  down  a  tree  four  times  because  it 
was  held  at  the  top  by  the  branches  of  other  trees; 
of  the  cow  that  licked  the  skin  of  her  stuffed  calf  so 
affectionately  that  it  came  apart,  whereupon  she  pro 
ceeded  to  eat  the  hay  with  which  it  was  stuffed.  He 
tells  of  the  phoebe-bird  that  betrays  her  nest  on  the 
porch  by  trying  to  hide  it  with  moss  in  similar 
fashion  to  the  way  all  phoebe-birds  hide  their  nests 
when  they  are  built  among  rocks.  He  tells  of  the 
highhole  that  repeatedly  drills  through  the  clap 
boards  of  an  empty  house  in  a  vain  attempt  to  find  a 
thickness  of  wood  deep  enough  in  which  to  build  its 
nest.  He  tells  of  the  migrating  lemmings  of  Norway 
that  plunge  into  the  sea  and  drown  in  vast  numbers 
because  of  their  instinct  to  swim  lakes  and  rivers  in 


244  THE  OTHER   ANIMALS 

the  course  of  their  migrations.  And,  having  told  a 
few  more  instances  of  like  kidney,  he  triumphantly 
demands :  Where  now  is  your  much-vaunted  reason 
ing  of  the  lower  animals  ? 

No  schoolboy  in  a  class  debate  could  be  guilty  of 
unfairer  argument.  It  is  equivalent  to  replying  to 
the  assertion  that  2+2  =  4,  by  saying:  "No; 
because  12  -~  4  =  3;  I  have  demonstrated  my  hon 
orable  opponent's  error."  When  a  man  attacks 
your  ability  as  a  foot-racer,  promptly  prove  to  him 
that  he  was  drunk  the  week  before  last,  and  the 
average  man  in  the  crowd  of  gaping  listeners  will 
believe  that  you  have  convincingly  refuted  the  slander 
on  your  fleetness  of  foot.  On  my  honor,  it  will 
work.  Try  it  sometime.  It  is  done  every  day.  Mr. 
Burroughs  has  done  it  himself,  and,  I  doubt  not, 
pulled  the  sophistical  wool  over  a  great  many  pairs 
of  eyes.  No,  no,  Mr.  Burroughs;  you  can't  dis 
prove  that  animals  reason  by  proving  that  they 
possess  instincts.  But  the  worst  of  it  is  that  you  have 
at  the  same  time  pulled  the  wool  over  your  own  eyes. 
You  have  set  up  a  straw  man  and  knocked  the  stuffing 
out  of  him  in  the  complacent  belief  that  it  was  the 
reasoning  of  lower  animals  you  were  knocking  out 


THE  OTHER  ANIMALS  245 

of  the  minds  of  those  who  disagreed  with  you.  When 
the  highhole  perforated  the  ice-house  and  let  out  the 
sawdust,  you  called  him  a  lunatic.  .  .  . 

But  let  us  be  charitable  —  and  serious.  What 
Mr.  Burroughs  instances  as  acts  of  instinct  certainly 
are  acts  of  instinct.  By  the  same  method  of  logic  one 
could  easily  adduce  a  multitude  of  instinctive  acts  on 
the  part  of  man  and  thereby  prove  that  man  is  an 
unreasoning  animal.  But  man  performs  actions 
of  both  sorts.  Between  man  and  the  lower  animals 
Mr.  Burroughs  finds  a  vast  gulf.  This  gulf  divides 
man  from  the  rest  of  his  kin  by  virtue  of  the  power  of 
reason  that  he  alone  possesses.  Man  is  a  voluntary 
agent.  Animals  are  automatons.  The  robin  fights 
its  reflection  in  the  window-pane  because  it  is  his  in 
stinct  to  fight  and  because  he  cannot  reason  out  the 
physical  laws  that  make  this  reflection  appear  real. 
An  animal  is  a  mechanism  that  operates  according  to 
foreordained  rules.  Wrapped  up  in  its  heredity,  and 
determined  long  before  it  was  born,  is  a  certain 
limited  capacity  of  ganglionic  response  to  eternal 
stimuli.  These  responses  have  been  fixed  in  the 
species  through  adaptation  to  environment.  Natu 
ral  selection  has  compelled  the  animal  automatically 


246  THE  OTHER  ANIMALS 

to  respond  in  a  fixed  manner  and  a  certain  way  to  all 
the  usual  external  stimuli  it  encounters  in  the  course 
of  a  usual  life.  Thus,  under  usual  circumstances, 
it  does  the  usual  thing.  Under  unusual  circum 
stances  it  still  does  the  usual  thing,  wherefore  the 
highhole  perforating  the  ice-house  is  guilty  of  lunacy 
—  of  unreason,  in  short.  To  do  the  unusual  thing 
under  unusual  circumstances,  successfully  to  adjust 
to  a  strange  environment  for  which  his  heredity  has 
not  automatically  fitted  an  adjustment,  Mr.  Bur 
roughs  says  is  impossible.  He  says  it  is  impossible 
because  it  would  be  a  non-instinctive  act,  and,  as  is 
well  known,  animals  act  only  through  instinct.  And 
right  here  we  catch  a  glimpse  of  Mr.  Burroughs's 
cart  standing  before  his  horse.  He  has  a  thesis,  and 
though  the  heavens  fall  he  will  fit  the  facts  to  the 
thesis.  Agassiz,  in  his  opposition  to  evolution,  had  a 
similar  thesis,  though  neither  did  he  fit  the  facts  to  it 
nor  did  the  heavens  fall.  Facts  are  very  disagreeable 
at  times. 

But  let  us  see.  Let  us  test  Mr.  Burroughs's  test 
of  reason  and  instinct.  When  I  was  a  small  boy  I 
had  a  dog  named  Rollo.  According  to  Mr.  Bur 
roughs,  Rollo  was  an  automaton,  responding  to  ex- 


THE  OTHER  ANIMALS  247 

ternal  stimuli  mechanically  as  directed  by  his  instincts. 
Now,  as  is  well  known,  the  development  of  instinct 
in  animals  is  a  dreadfully  slow  process.  There  is  no 
known  case  of  the  development  of  a  single  instinct  in 
domestic  animals  in  all  the  history  of  their  domestica 
tion.  Whatever  instincts  they  possess  they  brought 
with  them  from  the  wild  thousands  of  years  ago. 
Therefore,  all  Rollo's  actions  were  ganglionic  dis 
charges  [mechanically  determined  by  the  instincts 
that  had  been  developed  and  fixed  in  the  species 
thousands  of  years  ago.  Very  well.  It  is  clear, 
therefore,  that  in  all  his  play  with  me  he  would 
act  in  old-fashioned  ways,  adjusting  himself  to  the 
physical  and  psychical  factors  in  his  environment 
according  to  the  rules  of  adjustment  which  had 
obtained  in  the  wild  and  which  had  become  part  of 
his  heredity. 

Rollo  and  I  did  a  great  deal  of  rough  romping. 
He  chased  me  and  I  chased  him.  He  nipped  my 
legs,  arms,  and  hands,  often  so  hard  that  I  yelled, 
while  I  rolled  him  and  tumbled  him  and  dragged  him 
about,  often  so  strenuously  as  to  make  him  yelp.  In 
the  course  of  the  play  many  variations  arose.  I 
would  make  believe  to  sit  down  and  cry.  All  repent- 


248  THE  OTHER  ANIMALS 

ance  and  anxiety,  he  would  wag  his  tail  and  lick 
my  face,  whereupon  I  would  give  him  the  laugh.  He 
hated  to  be  laughed  at,  and  promptly  he  would  spring 
for  me  with  good-natured,  menacing  jaws,  and  the 
wild  romp  would  go  on.  I  had  scored  a  point. 
Then  he  hit  upon  a  trick.  Pursuing  him  into  the 
woodshed,  I  would  find  him  in  a  far  corner,  pre 
tending  to  sulk.  Now,  he  dearly  loved  the  play,  and 
never  got  enough  of  it.  But  at  first  he  fooled  me.  I 
thought  I  had  somehow  hurt  his  feelings  and  I  came 
and  knelt  before  him,  petting  him  and  speaking 
lovingly.  Promptly,  in  a  wild  outburst,  he  was  up 
and  away,  tumbling  me  over  on  the  floor  as  he 
dashed  out  in  a  mad  skurry  around  the  yard.  He  had 
scored  a  point. 

After  a  time,  it  became  largely  a  game  of  wits.  I 
reasoned  my  acts,  of  course,  while  his  were  instinctive. 
One  day,  as  he  pretended  to  sulk  in  the  corner,  I 
glanced  out  of  the  woodshed  doorway,  simulated 
pleasure  in  face,  voice,  and  language,  and  greeted  one 
of  my  schoolboy  friends.  Immediately  Rollo  forgot 
to  sulk,  rushed  out  to  see  the  newcomer,  and  saw 
empty  space.  The  laugh  was  on  him,  and  he  knew 
it,  and  I  gave  it  to  him,  too.  I  fooled  him  in  this  way 


THE  OTHER  ANIMALS  249 

two  or  three  times;  then  he  became  wise.  One  day 
I  worked  a  variation.  Suddenly  looking  out  the 
door,  making  believe  that  my  eyes  had  been  attracted 
by  a  moving  form,  I  said  coldly,  as  a  child  educated 
in  turning  away  bill-collectors  would  say :  "  No,  my 
father  is  not  at  home."  Like  a  shot,  Rollo  was  out 
the  door.  He  even  ran  down  the  alley  to  the  front 
of  the  house  in  a  vain  attempt  to  find  the  man  I  had 
addressed.  He  came  back  sheepishly  to  endure 
the  laugh  and  resume  the  game. 

And  now  we  come  to  the  test.  I  fooled  Rollo,  but 
how  was  the  fooling  made  possible  ?  What  precisely 
went  on  in  that  brain  of  his  ?  According  to  Mr.  Bur 
roughs,  who  denies  even  rudimentary  reasoning  to 
the  lower  animals,  Rollo  acted  instinctively,  me 
chanically  responding  to  the  external  stimulus,  fur 
nished  by  me,  which  led  him  to  believe  that  a  man 
was  outside  the  door.  Since  Rollo  acted  instinctively, 
and  since  all  instincts  are  very  ancient,  tracing  back 
to  the  predomestication  period,  we  can  conclude  only 
that  Rollo's  wild  ancestors,  at  the  time  this  particular 
instinct  was  fixed  into  the  heredity  of  the  species, 
must  have  been  in  close,  long-continued,  and  vital 
contact  with  man,  the  voice  of  man,  and  the  expres- 


250  THE  OTHER   ANIMALS 

sions  on  the  face  of  man.  But  since  the  instinct  must 
have  been  developed  during  the  predomestication 
period,  how  under  the  sun  could  his  wild,  undomesti- 
cated  ancestors  have  experienced  the  close,  long- 
continued,  and  vital  contact  with  man  ? 

Mr.  Burroughs  says  that  "instinct  suffices  for  the 
animals,"  that  "they  get  along  very  well  without 
reason."  But  I  say,  what  all  the  poor  nature-fakers 
will  say,  that  Rollo  reasoned.  He  was  born  into  the 
world  a  bundle  of  instincts  and  a  pinch  of  brain-stuff, 
all  wrapped  around  in  a  framework  of  bone,  meat,  and 
hide.  As  he  adjusted  to  his  environment  he  gained 
experiences.  He  remembered  these  experiences.  He 
learned  that  he  mustn't  chase  the  cat,  kill  chickens, 
nor  bite  little  girls'  dresses.  He  learned  that  little 
boys  had  little  boy  playmates.  He  learned  that  men 
came  into  back  yards.  He  learned  that  the  animal 
man,  on  meeting  with  his  own  kind,  was  given  to 
verbal  and  facial  greeting.  He  learned  that  when  a 
boy  greeted  a  playmate  he  did  it  differently  from  the 
way  he  greeted  a  man.  All  these  he  learned  and  re 
membered.  They  were  so  many  observations  —  so 
many  propositions,  if  you  please.  Now  what  went 
on  behind  those  brown  eyes  of  his,  inside  that  pinch 


THE  OTHER   ANIMALS  251 

of  brain-stuff,  when  I  turned  suddenly  to  the  door 
and  greeted  an  imaginary  person  outside  ?  Instantly, 
out  of  the  thousands  of  observations  stored  in  his 
brain,  came  to  the  front  of  his  consciousness  the  par 
ticular  observations  connected  with  this  particular 
situation.  Next,  he  established  a  relation  between 
these  observations.  This  relation  was  his  conclu 
sion,  achieved,  as  every  psychologist  will  agree,  by  a 
definite  cell-action  of  his  gray  matter.  From  the 
fact  that  his  master  turned  suddenly  toward  the  door, 
and  from  the  fact  that  his  master's  voice,  facial  ex 
pression,  and  whole  demeanor  expressed  surprise 
and  delight,  he  concluded  that  a  friend  was  outside. 
He  established  a  relation  between  various  things,  and 
the  act  of  establishing  relations  between  things  is  an 
act  of  reason  —  of  rudimentary  reason,  granted,  but 
none  the  less  of  reason. 

Of  course  Rollo  was  fooled.  But  that  is  no  call 
for  us  to  throw  chests  about  it.  How  often  has  every 
last  one  of  us  been  fooled  in  precisely  similar  fashion 
by  another  who  turned  and  suddenly  addressed  an 
imaginary  intruder  ?  Here  is  a  case  in  point  that 
occurred  in  the  West.  A  robber  had  held  up  a  rail 
road  train.  He  stood  in  the  aisle  between  the  seats, 


252  THE  OTHER   ANIMALS 

his  revolver  presented  at  the  head  of  the  conductor, 
who  stood  facing  him.  The  conductor  was  at  his 
mercy.  But  the  conductor  suddenly  looked  over  the 
robber's  shoulder,  at  the  same  time  saying  aloud  to 
an  imaginary  person  standing  at  the  robber's  back: 
"Don't  shoot  him."  Like  a  flash  the  robber  whirled 
about  to  confront  this  new  danger,  and  like  a  flash  the 
conductor  shot  him  down.  Show  me,  Mr.  Bor- 
roughs,  where  the  mental  process  in  the  robber's 
brain  was  a  shade  different  from  the  mental  process 
in  Rollo's  brain,  and  I'll  quit  nature-faking  and  join 
the  Trappists.  Surely,  when  a  man's  mental  process 
and  a  dog's  mental  process  are  precisely  similar,  the 
much-vaunted  gulf  of  Mr.  Burroughs's  fancy  has 
been  bridged. 

I  had  a  dog  in  Oakland.  His  name  was  Glen. 
His  father  was  Brown,  a  wolf-dog  that  had  been 
brought  down  from  Alaska,  and  his  mother  was  a 
half-wild  mountain  shepherd  dog.  Neither  father 
nor  mother  had  had  any  experience  with  automobiles. 
Glen  came  from  the  country,  a  half-grown  puppy,  to 
live  in  Oakland.  Immediately  he  became  infatu 
ated  with  an  automobile.  He  reached  the  culmina 
tion  of  happiness  when  he  was  permitted  to  sit  up 


THE  OTHER  ANIMALS  253 

in  the  front  seat  alongside  the  chauffeur.  He  would 
spend  a  whole  day  at  a  time  on  an  automobile  de 
bauch,  even  going  without  food.  Often  the  machine 
started  directly  from  inside  the  barn,  dashed  out  the 
driveway  without  stopping,  and  was  gone.  Glen  got 
left  behind  several  times.  The  custom  was  es 
tablished  that  whoever  was  taking  the  machine  out 
should  toot  the  horn  before  starting.  Glen  learned 
the  signal.  No  matter  where  he  was  nor  what  he 
was  doing,  when  that  horn  tooted  he  was  off  for  the 
barn  and  up  into  the  front  seat. 

One  morning,  while  Glen  was  on  the  back  porch 
eating  his  breakfast  of  mush  and  milk,  the  chauffeur 
tooted.  Glen  rushed  down  the  steps,  into  the  barn, 
and  took  his  front  seat,  the  mush  and  milk  dripping 
down  his  excited  and  happy  chops.  In  passing,  I 
may  point  out  that  in  thus  forsaking  his  breakfast  for 
the  automobile  he  was  displaying  what  is  called  the 
power  of  choice  —  a  peculiarly  lordly  attribute  that, 
according  to  Mr.  Burroughs,  belongs  to  man  alone. 
Yet  Glen  made  his  choice  between  food  and  fun. 

It  was  not  that  Glen  wanted  his  breakfast  less,  but 
that  he  wanted  his  ride  more.  The  toot  was  only  a 
joke.  The  automobile  did  not  start.  Glen  waited 


254  THE  OTHER   ANIMALS 

and  watched.  Evidently  he  saw  no  signs  of  an  im 
mediate  start,  for  finally  he  jumped  out  of  the  seat 
and  went  back  to  his  breakfast.  He  ate  with  indecent 
haste,  like  a  man  anxious  to  catch  a  train.  Again  the 
horn  tooted,  again  he  deserted  his  breakfast,  and 
again  he  sat  in  the  seat  and  waited  vainly  for  the 
machine  to  go.  They  came  close  to  spoiling  Glen's 
breakfast  for  him,  for  he  was  kept  on  the  jump  be 
tween  porch  and  barn.  Then  he  grew  wise.  They 
tooted  the  horn  loudly  and  insistently,  but  he  stayed 
by  his  breakfast  and  finished  it.  Thus  once  more 
did  he  display  power  of  choice,  incidentally  of  con 
trol,  for  when  that  horn  tooted  it  was  all  he  could  do 
to  refrain  from  running  for  the  barn. 

The  nature-faker  would  analyze  what  went  on  in 
Glen's  brain  somewhat  in  the  following  fashion.  He 
had  had,  in  his  short  life,  experiences  that  not  one  of 
all  his  ancestors  had  ever  had.  He  had  learned  that 
automobiles  went  fast,  that  once  in  motion  it  was 
impossible  for  him  to  get  on  board,  that  the  toot  of 
the  horn  was  a  noise  that  was  peculiar  to  automobiles. 
These  were  so  many  propositions.  Now  reasoning 
can  be  defined  as  the  act  or  process  of  the  brain  by 
which,  from  propositions  known  or  assumed,  new 


THE  OTHER   ANIMALS  255 

propositions  are  reached.  Out  of  the  propositions 
which  I  have  shown  were  Glen's,  and  which  had  be 
come  his  through  the  medium  of  his  own  observation 
of  the  phenomena  of  life,  he  made  the  new  proposition 
that  when  the  horn  tooted  it  was  time  for  him  to  get 
on  board. 

But  on  the  morning  I  have  described,  the  chauffeur 
fooled  Glen.  Somehow,  and  much  to  his  own  dis 
gust,  his  reasoning  was  erroneous.  The  machine  did 
not  start  after  all.  But  to  reason  incorrectly  is  very 
human.  The  great  trouble  in  all  acts  of  reasoning 
is  to  include  all  the  propositions  in  the  problem. 
Glen  had  included  every  proposition  but  one,  namely, 
the  human  proposition,  the  joke  in  the  brain  of  the 
chauffeur.  For  a  number  of  times  Glen  was  fooled. 
Then  he  performed  another  mental  act.  In  his 
problem  he  included  the  human  proposition  (the 
joke  in  the  brain  of  the  chauffeur),  and  he  reached 
the  new  conclusion  that  when  the  horn  tooted  the 
automobile  was  not  going  to  start.  Basing  his  action 
on  this  conclusion,  he  remained  on  the  porch  and 
finished  his  breakfast.  You  and  I,  and  even  Mr. 
Burroughs,  perform  acts  of  reasoning  precisely  simi 
lar  to  this  every  day  in  our  lives.  How  Mr.  Bur- 


256  THE  OTHER  ANIMALS 

roughs  will  explain  Glen's  action  by  the  instinctive 
theory  is  beyond  me.  In  wildest  fantasy,  even,  my 
brain  refuses  to  follow  Mr.  Burroughs  into  the  pri 
meval  forest,  where  Glen's  dim  ancestors,  to  the  toot 
ing  of  automobile  horns,  were  fixing  into  the  hered 
ity  of  the  breed  the  particular  instinct  that  would 
enable  Glen,  a  few  thousand  years  later,  capably 
to  cope  with  automobiles. 

Dr.  C.  J.  Romanes  tells  of  a  female  chimpanzee 
who  was  taught  to  count  straws  up  to  five.  She  held 
the  straws  in  her  hand,  exposing  the  ends  to  the 
number  requested.  If  she  were  asked  for  three,  she 
held  up  three.  If  she  were  asked  for  four,  she  held 
up  four.  All  this  is  a  mere  matter  of  training.  But 
consider  now,  Mr.  Burroughs,  what  follows.  When 
she  was  asked  for  five  straws  and  she  had  only  four, 
she  doubled  one  straw,  exposing  both  its  ends  and 
thus  making  up  the  required  number.  She  did 
not  do  this  only  once,  and  by  accident.  She  did  it 
whenever  more  straws  were  asked  for  than  she 
possessed.  Did  she  perform  a  distinctly  reasoning 
act  ?  or  was  her  action  the  result  of  blind,  mechani 
cal  instinct  ?  If  Mr.  Burroughs  cannot  answer  to 
his  own  satisfaction,  he  may  call  Dr.  Romanes  a 


THE   OTHER   ANIMALS  257 

nature-faker    and    dismiss    the    incident    from    his 
mind. 

The  foregoing  is  a  trick  of  erroneous  human  reason 
ing  that  works  very  successfully  in  the  United  States 
these  days.  It  is  certainly  a  trick  of  Mr.  Burroughs, 
of  which  he  is  guilty  with  distressing  frequency. 
When  a  poor  devil  of  a  writer  records  what  he  has 
seen,  and  when  what  he  has  seen  does  not  jibe  with 
Mr.  Burroughs's  mediaeval  theory,  he  calls  said 
writer  a  nature-faker.  When  a  man  like  Mr.  Horna- 
day  comes  along,  Mr.  Burroughs  works  a  variation 
of  the  trick  on  him.  Mr.  Hornaday  has  made  a  close 
study  of  the  orang  in  captivity  and  of  the  orang 
in  its  native  state.  Also,  he  has  studied  closely  many 
other  of  the  higher  animal  types.  Also,  in  the 
tropics,  he  has  studied  the  lower  types  of  man.  Mr. 
Hornaday  is  a  man  of  experience  and  reputation. 
When  he  was  asked  if  animals  reasoned,  out  of  all 
his  knowledge  on  the  subject  he  replied  that  to  ask 
him  such  a  question  was  equivalent  to  asking  him 
if  fishes  swim.  Now  Mr.  Burroughs  has  not  had 
much  experience  in  studying  the  lower  human 
types  and  the  higher  animal  types.  Living  in  a 
rural  district  in  the  state  of  New  York,  and  study- 


258  THE  OTHER   ANIMALS 

ing  principally  birds  in  that  limited  habitat,  he  has 
been  in  contact  neither  with  the  higher  animal  types 
nor  the  lower  human  types.  But  Mr.  Hornaday's 
reply  is  such  a  facer  to  him  and  his  homocentric 
theory  that  he  has  to  do  something.  And  he 
does  it.  He  retorts :  "  I  suspect  that  Mr.  Hornaday 
is  a  better  naturalist  than  he  is  a  comparative  psy 
chologist."  Exit  Mr.  Hornaday.  Who  the  devil  is 
Mr.  Hornaday,  anyway  ?  The  sage  of  Slabsides  has 
spoken.  When  Darwin  concluded  that  animals  were 
capable  of  reasoning  in  a  rudimentary  way,  Mr. 
Burroughs  laid  him  out  in  the  same  fashion  by  say 
ing  :  "  But  Darwin  was  also  a  much  greater  naturalist 
than  psychologist"  —  and  this  despite  Darwin's  long 
life  of  laborious  research  that  was  not  wholly  confined 
to  a  rural  district  such  as  Mr.  Burroughs  inhabits  in 
New  York.  Mr.  Burroughs's  method  of  argument 
is  beautiful.  It  reminds  one  of  the  man  whose 
pronunciation  was  vile,  but  who  said:  "Damn  the 
dictionary;  ain't  I  here?" 

And  now  we  come  to  the  mental  processes  of  Mr. 
Burroughs  —  to  the  psychology  of  the  ego,  if  you 
please.  Mr.  Burroughs  has  troubles  of  his  own  with 
the  dictionary.  He  violates  language  from  the  stand- 


THE  OTHER   ANIMALS  259 

point  both  of  logic  and  science.  Language  is  a  tool, 
and  definitions  embodied  in  language  should  agree 
with  the  facts  and  history  of  life.  But  Mr.  Bur- 
roughs's  definitions  do  not  so  agree.  This,  in  turn, 
is  not  the  fault  of  his  education,  but  of  his  ego.  To 
him,  despite  his  well-exploited  and  patronizing  devo 
tion  to  them,  the  lower  animals  are  disgustingly  low. 
To  him,  affinity  and  kinship  with  the  other  animals 
is  a  repugnant  thing.  He  will  have  none  of  it.  He 
is  too  glorious  a  personality  not  to  have  between  him 
and  the  other  animals  a  vast  and  impassable  gulf. 
The  cause  of  Mr.  Burroughs's  mediaeval  view  of  the 
other  animals  is  to  be  found,  not  in  his  knowledge  of 
those  other  animals,  but  in  the  suggestion  of  his  self- 
exalted  ego.  In  short,  Mr.  Burroughs's  homocentric 
theory  has  been  developed  out  of  his  homocentric  ego, 
and  by  the  misuse  of  language  he  strives  to  make 
the  facts  of  life  jibe  with  his  theory. 

After  the  instances  I  have  cited  of  actions  of  ani 
mals  which  are  impossible  of  explanation  as  due  to 
instinct,  Mr.  Burroughs  may  reply:  "Your  in 
stances  are  easily  explained  by  the  simple  law  of  asso 
ciation."  To  this  I  reply,  first,  then  why  did  you 
deny  rudimentary  reason  to  animals  ?  and  why  did 


26o  THE  OTHER   ANIMALS 

you  state  flatly  that  "instinct  suffices  for  the  animals"? 
And,  second,  with  great  reluctance  and  with  over 
whelming  humility,  because  of  my  youth,  I  suggest 
that  you  do  not  know  exactly  what  you  do  mean  by 
that  phrase  "the  simple  law  of  association."  Your 
trouble,  I  repeat,  is  with  definitions.  You  have 
grasped  that  man  performs  what  is  called  abstract 
reasoning,  you  have  made  a  definition  of  abstract 
reason,  and,  betrayed  by  that  great  maker  of  theories, 
the  ego,  you  have  come  to  think  that  all  reasoning 
is  abstract  and  that  what  is  not  abstract  reason  is  not 
reason  at  all.  This  is  your  attitude  toward  rudimen 
tary  reason.  Such  a  process,  in  one  of  the  other  ani 
mals,  must  be  either  abstract  or  it  is  not  a  reason 
ing  process.  Your  intelligence  tells  you  that  such  a 
process  is  not  abstract  reasoning,  and  your  homocen- 
tric  thesis  compels  you  to  conclude  that  it  can  be  only 
a  mechanical,  instinctive  process. 

Definitions  must  agree,  not  with  egos,  but  with 
life.  Mr.  Burroughs  goes  on  the  basis  that  a  defini 
tion  is  something  hard  and  fast,  absolute  and  eternal. 
He  forgets  that  all  the  universe  is  in  flux;  that  defini 
tions  are  arbitrary  and  ephemeral ;  that  they  fix,  for 
a  fleeting  instant  of  time,  things  that  in  the  past  were 


THE  OTHER  ANIMALS  261 

not,  that  in  the  future  will  be  not,  that  out  of  the  past 
become,  and  that  out  of  the  present  pass  on  to  the 
future  and  become  other  things.  Definitions  cannot 
rule  life.  Definitions  cannot  be  made  to  rule  life. 
Life  must  rule  definitions  or  else  the  definitions 
perish. 

Mr.  Burroughs  forgets  the  evolution  of  reason.  He 
makes  a  definition  of  reason  without  regard  to  its 
history,  and  that  definition  is  of  reason  purely  ab 
stract.  Human  reason,  as  we  know  it  to-day,  is 
not  a  creation,  but  a  growth.  Its  history  goes  back 
to  the  primordial  slime  that  was  quick  with  muddy 
life;  its  history  goes  back  to  the  first  vitalized  inor 
ganic.  And  here  are  the  steps  of  its  ascent  from  the 
mud  to  man :  simple  reflex  action,  compound  reflex 
action,  memory,  habit,  rudimentary  reason,  and  ab 
stract  reason.  In  the  course  of  the  climb,  thanks  to 
natural  selection,  instinct  was  evolved.  Habit  is 
a  development  in  the  individual.  Instinct  is  a  race- 
habit.  Instinct  is  blind,  unreasoning,  mechan 
ical.  This  was  the  dividing  of  the  ways  in  the 
climb  of  aspiring  life.  The  perfect  culmination 
of  instinct  we  find  in  the  ant-heap  and  the  beehive. 
Instinct  proved  a  blind  alley.  But  the  other  path, 


262  THE  OTHER   ANIMALS 

that  of  reason,  led  on  and  on  even  to  Mr.  Burroughs 
and  you  and  me. 

There  are  no  impassable  gulfs,  unless  one 
chooses,  as  Mr.  Burroughs  does,  to  ignore  the  lower 
human  types  and  the  higher  animal  types,  and  to 
compare  human  mind  with  bird  mind.  It  was  im 
possible  for  life  to  reason  abstractly  until  speech 
was  developed.  Equipped  with  swords,  with  tools 
of  thought,  in  short,  the  slow  development  of  the 
power  to  reason  in  the  abstract  went  on.  The 
lowest  human  types  do  little  or  no  reasoning  in  the 
abstract.  With  every  word,  with  every  increase  in 
the  complexity  of  thought,  with  every  ascertained 
fact  so  gained,  went  on  action  and  reaction  in  the  gray 
matter  of  the  speech  discoverer,  and  slowly,  step  by 
step,  through  hundreds  of  thousands  of  years,  de 
veloped  the  power  of  reason. 

Place  a  honey-bee  in  a  glass  bottle.  Turn  the 
bottom  of  the  bottle  toward  a  lighted  lamp  so  that 
the  open  mouth  is  away  from  the  lamp.  Vainly, 
ceaselessly,  a  thousand  times,  undeterred  by  the 
bafflement  and  the  pain,  the  bee  will  hurl  himself 
against  the  bottom  of  the  bottle  as  he  strives  to  win  to 
the  light.  That  is  instinct.  Place  your  dog  in  a 


THE  OTHER  ANIMALS  263 

back  yard  and  go  away.  He  is  your  dog.  He  loves 
you.  He  yearns  toward  you  as  the  bee  yearns  tow 
ard  the  light.  He  listens  to  your  departing  foot 
steps.  But  the  fence  is  too  high.  Then  he  turns  his 
back  upon  the  direction  in  which  you  are  departing, 
and  runs  around  the  yard.  He  is  frantic  with  affec 
tion  and  desire.  But  he  is  not  blind.  He  is  obser 
vant.  He  is  looking  for  a  hole  under  the  fence,  or 
through  the  fence,  or  for  a  place  where  the  fence  is 
not  so  high.  He  sees  a  dry-goods  box  standing  against 
the  fence.  Presto  !  He  leaps  upon  it,  goes  over  the 
barrier,  and  tears  down  the  street  to  overtake  you. 
Is  that  instinct  ? 

Here,  in  the  household  where  I  am  writing  this, 
is  a  little  Tahitian  "feeding-child."  He  believes 
firmly  that  a  tiny  dwarf  resides  in  the  box  of  my 
talking-machine  and  that  it  is  the  tiny  dwarf  who 
does  the  singing  and  the  talking.  Not  even  Mr. 
Burroughs  will  affirm  that  the  child  has  reached 
this  conclusion  by  an  instinctive  process.  Of  course 
the  child  reasons  the  existence  of  the  dwarf  in 
the  box.  How  else  could  the  box  talk  and  sing  ? 
In  that  child's  limited  experience  it  has  never  en 
countered  a  single  instance  where  speech  and  song 


264  THE  OTHER  ANIMALS 

were  produced  otherwise  than  by  direct  human 
agency.  I  doubt  not  that  the  dog  is  considerably 
surprised  when  he  hears  his  master's  voice  coming 
out  of  a  box. 

The  adult  savage,  on  his  first  introduction  to  a 
telephone,  rushes  around  to  the  adjoining  room  to  find 
the  man  who  is  talking  through  the  partition.  Is  this 
act  instinctive  ?  No.  Out  of  his  limited  experience, 
out  of  his  limited  knowledge  of  physics,  he  reasons 
that  the  only  explanation  possible  is  that  a  man  is  in 
the  other  room  talking  through  the  partition. 

But  that  savage  cannot  be  fooled  by  a  hand- 
mirror.  We  must  go  lower  down  in  the  animal 
scale,  to  the  monkey.  The  monkey  swiftly  learns 
that  the  monkey  it  sees  is  not  in  the  glass,  wherefore 
it  reaches  craftily  behind  the  glass.  Is  this  instinct  ? 
No.  It  is  rudimentary  reasoning.  Lower  than  the 
monkey  in  the  scale  of  brain  is  the  robin,  and  the 
robin  fights  its  reflection  in  the  window-pane.  Now 
climb  with  me  for  a  space.  From  the  robin  to  the 
monkey,  where  is  the  impassable  gulf?  and  where 
is  the  impassable  gulf  between  the  monkey  and  the 
feeding-child  ?  between  the  feeding-child  and  the 
savage  who  seeks  the  man  behind  the  partition  ?  aye, 


THE  OTHER   ANIMALS  265 

and  between  the  savage  and  the  astute  financiers 
Mrs.  Chadwick  fooled  and  the  thousands  who  were 
fooled  by  the  Keeley  Motor  swindle  ? 

Let  us  be  very  humble.  We  who  are  so  very 
human  are  very  animal.  Kinship  with  the  other 
animals  is  no  more  repugnant  to  Mr.  Burroughs  than 
was  the  heliocentric  theory  to  the  priests  who  com 
pelled  Galileo  to  recant.  Not  correct  human  reason, 
not  the  evidence  of  the  ascertained  fact,  but  pride  of 
ego,  was  responsible  for  the  repugnance. 

In  his  stiff-necked  pride,  Mr.  Burroughs  runs  a 
hazard  more  humiliating  to  that  pride  than  any 
amount  of  kinship  with  the  other  animals.  When  a 
dog  exhibits  choice,  direction,  control,  and  reason; 
when  it  is  shown  that  certain  mental  processes  in 
that  dog's  brain  are  precisely  duplicated  in  the  brain 
of  man;  and  when  Mr.  Burroughs  convincingly 
proves  that  every  action  of  the  dog  is  mechanical 
and  automatic  —  then,  by  precisely  the  same  argu 
ments,  can  it  be  proved  that  the  similar  actions 
of  man  are  mechanical  and  automatic.  No,  Mr. 
Burroughs,  though  you  stand  on  the  top  of  the 
ladder  of  life,  you  must  not  kick  out  that  ladder 
from  under  your  feet.  You  must  not  deny  your 


266  THE  OTHER   ANIMALS 

relatives,  the  other  animals.  Their  history  is  your 
history,  and  if  you  kick  them  to  the  bottom  of  the 
abyss,  to  the  bottom  of  the  abyss  you  go  yourself. 
By  them  you  stand  or  fall.  What  you  repudiate 
in  them  you  repudiate  in  yourself — a  pretty  spec 
tacle,  truly,  of  an  exalted  animal  striving  to  disown 
the  stuff  of  life  out  of  which  it  is  made,  striving 
by  use  of  the  very  reason  that  was  developed  by  evo 
lution  to  deny  the  processes  of  evolution  that  devel 
oped  it.  This  may  be  good  egotism,  but  it  is  not  good 
science. 

PAPEETE,  TAHITI, 
March,  1908. 


THE  YELLOW  PERIL 


THE  YELLOW   PERIL 

NO  more  marked  contrast  appears  in  passing 
from  our  Western  land  to  the  paper  houses 
and  cherry  blossoms  of  Japan  than  appears 
in  passing  from  Korea  to  China.  To  achieve  a 
correct  appreciation  of  the  Chinese  the  traveller 
should  first  sojourn  amongst  the  Koreans  for  several 
months,  and  then,  one  fine  day,  cross  over  the  Yalu 
into  Manchuria.  It  would  be  of  exceptional  ad 
vantage  to  the  correctness  of  appreciation  did  he 
cross  over  the  Yalu  on  the  heels  of  a  hostile  and 
alien  army. 

War  is  to-day  the  final  arbiter  in  the  affairs  of 
men,  and  it  is  as  yet  the  final  test  of  the  worthwhile- 
ness  of  peoples.  Tested  thus,  the  Korean  fails.  He 
lacks  the  nerve  to  remain  when  a  strange  army 
crosses  his  land.  The  few  goods  and  chattels  he 
may  have  managed  to  accumulate  he  puts  on  his 
back,  along  with  his  doors  and  windows,  and  away 
he  heads  for  his  mountain  fastnesses.  Later  he 
may  return,  sans  goods,  chattels,  doors,  and  win- 

269 


270  THE  YELLOW   PERIL 

dows,  impelled  by  insatiable  curiosity  for  a  "look 
see."  But  it  is  curiosity  merely  —  a  timid,  deerlike 
curiosity.  He  is  prepared  to  bound  away  on  his 
long  legs  at  the  first  hint  of  danger  or  trouble. 

Northern  Korea  was  a  desolate  land  when  the 
Japanese  passed  through.  Villages  and  towns  were 
deserted.  The  fields  lay  untouched.  There  was 
no  ploughing  nor  sowing,  no  green  things  growing. 
Little  or  nothing  was  to  be  purchased.  One  car 
ried  one's  own  food  with  him,  and  food  for  horses 
and  servants  was  the  anxious  problem  that  waited 
at  the  day's  end.  In  many  a  lonely  village  not  an 
ounce  nor  a  grain  of  anything  could  be  brought,  and 
yet  there  might  be  standing  around  scores  of  white- 
garmented,  stalwart  Koreans,  smoking  yard-long 
pipes  and  chattering,  chattering  —  ceaselessly  chat 
tering.  Love,  money,  or  force  could  not  procure 
from  them  a  horseshoe  or  a  horseshoe  nail. 

"Upso,"  was  their  invariable  reply.  "Upso," 
cursed  word,  which  means  "Have  not  got." 

They  had  tramped  probably  forty  miles  that  day, 
down  from  their  hiding-places,  just  for  a  "look  see," 
and  forty  miles  back  they  would  cheerfully  tramp, 
chattering  all  the  way  over  what  they  had  seen. 


THE   YELLOW   PERIL  271 

Shake  a  stick  at  them  as  they  stand  chattering  about 
your  camp-fire,  and  the  gloom  of  the  landscape  will 
be  filled  with  tall,  flitting  ghosts,  bounding  like  deer, 
with  great  springy  strides  which  one  cannot  but 
envy.  They  have  splendid  vigor  and  fine  bodies,  but 
they  are  accustomed  to  being  beaten  and  robbed  with 
out  protest  or  resistance  by  every  chance  foreigner 
who  enters  their  country. 

From  this  nerveless,  forsaken  Korean  land  I  rode 
down  upon  the  sandy  islands  of  the  Yalu.  For 
weeks  these  islands  had  been  the  dread  between- 
the-lines  of  two  fighting  armies.  The  air  above  had 
been  rent  by  screaming  projectiles.  The  echoes  of 
the  final  battle  had  scarcely  died  away.  The  trains 
of  Japanese  wounded  and  Japanese  dead  were  trail 
ing  by. 

On  the  conical  hill,  a  quarter  of  a  mile  away, 
the  Russian  dead  were  being  buried  in  their  trenches 
and  in  the  shell  holes  made  by  the  Japanese.  And 
here,  in  the  thick  of  it  all,  a  man  was  ploughing. 
Green  things  were  growing  —  young  onions  —  and 
the  man  who  was  weeding  them  paused  from  his 
labor  long  enough  to  sell  me  a  handful.  Near  by 
was  the  smoke-blackened  ruin  of  the  farm-house, 


272  THE  YELLOW   PERIL 

fired  by  the  Russians  when  they  retreated  from  the 
river-bed.  Two  men  were  removing  the  debris, 
cleaning  the  confusion,  preparatory  to  rebuilding. 
They  were  clad  in  blue.  Pigtails  hung  down  their 
backs.  I  was  in  China  ! 

I  rode  to  the  shore,  into  the  village  of  Kuel-ian- 
Ching.  There  were  no  lounging  men  smoking  long 
pipes  and  chattering.  The  previous  day  the  Rus 
sians  had  been  there,  a  bloody  battle  had  been 
fought,  and  to-day  the  Japanese  were  there  —  but 
what  was  that  to  talk  about  ?  Everybody  was  busy. 
Men  were  offering  eggs  and  chickens  and  fruit  for 
sale  upon  the  street,  and  bread,  as  I  live,  bread  in 
small  round  loaves  or  buns.  I  rode  on  into  the 
country.  Everywhere  a  toiling  population  was  in 
evidence.  The  houses  and  walls  were  strong  and 
substantial.  Stone  and  brick  replaced  the  mud 
walls  of  the  Korean  dwellings.  Twilight  fell  and 
deepened,  and  still  the  ploughs  went  up  and  down 
the  fields,  the  sowers  following  after.  Trains  of 
wheelbarrows,  heavily  loaded,  squeaked  by,  and 
Pekin  carts,  drawn  by  from  four  to  six  cows,  horses, 
mules,  ponies,  or  jackasses  —  cows  even  with  their 
new-born  calves  tottering  along  on  puny  legs  out- 


THE  YELLOW   PERIL  273 

side  the  traces.  Everybody  worked.  Everything 
worked.  I  saw  a  man  mending  the  road.  I  was  in 
China. 

I  came  to  the  city  of  Antung,  and  lodged  with  a 
merchant.  He  was  a  grain  merchant.  Corn  he  had, 
hundreds  of  bushels,  stored  in  great  bins  of  stout 
matting;  peas  and  beans  in  sacks,  and  in  the  back 
yard  his  millstones  went  round  and  round,  grind 
ing  out  meal.  Also,  in  his  back  yard,  were  buildings 
containing  vats  sunk  into  the  ground,  and  here  the 
tanners  were  at  work  making  leather.  I  bought  a 
measure  of  corn  from  mine  host  for  my  horses,  and 
he  overcharged  me  thirty  cents.  I  was  in  China. 
Antung  was  jammed  with  Japanese  troops.  It  was 
the  thick  of  war.  But  it  did  not  matter.  The  work 
of  Antung  went  on  just  the  same.  The  shops  were 
wide  open;  the  streets  were  lined  with  pedlers. 
One  could  buy  anything;  get  anything  made.  I 
dined  at  a  Chinese  restaurant,  cleansed  myself  at  a 
public  bath  in  a  private  tub  with  a  small  boy  to 
assist  in  the  scrubbing.  I  bought  condensed  milk, 
butter,  canned  vegetables,  bread,  and  cake.  I  re 
peat  it,  cake  —  good  cake.  I  bought  knives,  forks, 
and  spoons,  graniteware  dishes  and  mugs.  There 


274  THE  YELLOW  PERIL 

were  horseshoes  and  horseshoers.  A  worker  in  iron 
realized  for  me  new  designs  of  mine  for  my  tent 
poles.  My  shoes  were  sent  out  to  be  repaired.  A 
barber  shampooed  my  hair.  A  servant  returned 
with  corn-beef  in  tins,  a  bottle  of  port,  another  of 
cognac,  and  beer,  blessed  beer,  to  wash  out  from  my 
throat  the  dust  of  an  army.  It  was  the  land  of 
Canaan.  I  was  in  China. 

The  Korean  is  the  perfect  type  of  inefficiency  — 
of  utter  worthlessness.  The  Chinese  is  the  perfect 
type  of  industry.  For  sheer  work  no  worker  in  the 
world  can  compare  with  him.  Work  is  the  breath 
of  his  nostrils.  It  is  his  solution  of  existence.  It 
is  to  him  what  wandering  and  fighting  in  far  lands 
and  spiritual  adventure  have  been  to  other  peoples. 
Liberty  to  him  epitomizes  itself  in  access  to  the 
means  of  toil.  To  till  the  soil  and  labor  intermi 
nably  with  rude  implements  and  utensils  is  all  he 
asks  of  life  and  of  the  powers  that  be.  Work  is 
what  he  desires  above  all  things,  and  he  will  work 
at  anything  for  anybody. 

During  the  taking  of  the  Taku  forts  he  carried 
scaling  ladders  at  the  heads  of  the  storming  columns 
and  planted  them  against  the  walls.  He  did  this, 


THE   YELLOW   PERIL  275 

not  from  a  sense  of  patriotism,  but  for  the  invading 
foreign  devils  because  they  paid  him  a  daily  wage  of 
fifty  cents.  He  is  not  frightened  by  war.  He  accepts 
it  as  he  does  rain  and  sunshine,  the  changing  of  the 
seasons,  and  other  natural  phenomena.  He  pre 
pares  for  it,  endures  it,  and  survives  it,  and  when 
the  tide  of  battle  sweeps  by,  the  thunder  of  the  guns 
still  reverberating  in  the  distant  canyons,,  he  is  seen 
calmly  bending  to  his  usual  tasks.  Nay>  war  itself 
bears  fruits  whereof  he  may  pick.  Before  the  dead 
are  cold  or  the  burial  squads  have  arrived  he  is  out 
on  the  field,  stripping  the  mangled  bodies,  collecting 
the  shrapnel,  and  ferreting  in  the  shell  holes  for 
slivers  and  fragments  of  iron. 

The  Chinese  is  no  coward.  He  does  not  carry 
away  his  doors  and  windows  to  the  mountains,  but 
remains  to  guard  them  when  alien  soldiers  occupy 
his  town.  He  does  not  hide  away  his  chickens  and 
his  eggs,  nor  any  other  commodity  he  possesses. 
He  proceeds  at  once  to  offer  them  for  sale.  Nor  is 
he  to  be  bullied  into  lowering  his  price.  What  if 
the  purchaser  be  a  soldier  and  an  alien  made  cocky 
by  victory  and  confident  by  overwhelming  force  ? 
He  has  two  large  pears  saved  over  from  last  year 


276  THE  YELLOW   PERIL 

which  he  will  sell  for  five  sen,  or  for  the  same  price 
three  small  pears.  What  if  one  soldier  persist  in 
taking  away  with  him  three  large  pears  ?  What  if 
there  be  twenty  other  soldiers  jostling  about  him  ? 
He  turns  over  his  sack  of  fruit  to  another  Chinese 
and  races  down  the  street  after  his  pears  and  the 
soldier  responsible  for  their  flight,  and  he  does  not 
return  till  he  has  wrenched  away  one  large  pear 
from  that  soldier's  grasp. 

Nor  is  the  Chinese  the  type  of  permanence  which 
he  has  been  so  often  designated.  He  is  not  so  ill- 
disposed  toward  new  ideas  and  new  methods  as  his 
history  would  seem  to  indicate.  True,  his  forms, 
customs,  and  methods  have  been  permanent  these 
many  centuries,  but  this  has  been  due  to  the  fact 
that  his  government  was  in  the  hands  of  the  learned 
classes,  and  that  these  governing  scholars  found 
their  salvation  lay  in  suppressing  all  progressive 
ideas.  The  ideas  behind  the  Boxer  troubles  and 
the  outbreaks  over  the  introduction  of  railroad  and 
other  foreign  devil  machinations  have  emanated 
from  the  minds  of  the  literati,  and  been  spread  by 
their  pamphlets  and  propagandists. 

Originality  and  enterprise  have  been  suppressed 


THE  YELLOW   PERIL  277 

in  the  Chinese  for  scores  of  generations.  Only  has 
remained  to  him  industry,  and  in  this  has  he  found 
the  supreme  expression  of  his  being.  On  the  other 
hand,  his  susceptibility  to  new  ideas  has  been  well 
demonstrated  wherever  he  has  escaped  beyond  the 
restrictions  imposed  upon  him  by  his  government. 
So  far  as  the  business  man  is  concerned  he  has 
grasped  far  more  clearly  the  Western  code  of  busi 
ness,  the  Western  ethics  of  business,  than  has  the 
Japanese.  He  has  learned,  as  a  matter  of  course, 
to  keep  his  word  or  his  bond.  As  yet,  the  Japanese 
business  man  has  failed  to  understand  this.  When 
he  has  signed  a  time  contract  and  when  changing 
conditions  cause  him  to  lose  by  it,  the  Japanese 
merchant  cannot  understand  why  he  should  live  up 
to  his  contract.  It  is  beyond  his  comprehension 
and  repulsive  to  his  common  sense  that  he  should 
live  up  to  his  contract  and  thereby  lose  money.  He 
firmly  believes  that  the  changing  conditions  them 
selves  absolve  him.  And  in  so  far  adaptable  as  he 
has  shown  himself  to  be  in  other  respects,  he  fails 
to  grasp  a  radically  new  idea  where  the  Chinese 
succeeds. 

Here  we  have  the  Chinese,  four  hundred  millions 


278  THE   YELLOW   PERIL 

of  him,  occupying  a  vast  land  of  immense  natural 
resources  —  resources  of  a  twentieth  century  age,  of 
a  machine  age;  resources  of  coal  and  iron,  which 
are  the  backbone  of  commercial  civilization.  He  is 
an  indefatigable  worker.  He  is  not  dead  to  new 
ideas,  new  methods,  new  systems.  Under  a  capa 
ble  management  he  can  be  made  to  do  anything. 
Truly  would  he  of  himself  constitute  the  much- 
heralded  Yellow  Peril  were  it  not  for  his  present 
management.  This  management,  his  government, 
is  set,  crystallized.  It  is  what  binds  him  down  to 
building  as  his  fathers  built.  The  governing  class, 
entrenched  by  the  precedent  and  power  of  centuries 
and  by  the  stamp  it  has  put  upon  his  mind,  will 
never  free  him.  It  would  be  the  suicide  of  the 
governing  class,  and  the  governing  class  knows  it. 

Comes  now  the  Japanese.  On  the  streets  of  An- 
tung,  of  Feng-Wang-Chang,  or  of  any  other  Man- 
churian  city,  the  following  is  a  familiar  scene :  One 
is  hurrying  home  through  the  dark  of  the  unlighted 
streets  when  he  comes  upon  a  paper  lantern  resting 
on  the  ground.  On  one  side  squats  a  Chinese 
civilian  on  his  hams,  on  the  other  side  squats  a 
Japanese  soldier.  One  dips  his  forefinger  in  the 


THE  YELLOW   PERIL  279 

dust  and  writes  strange,  monstrous  characters. 
The  other  nods  understanding,  sweeps  the  dust  slate 
level  with  his  hand,  and  with  his  forefinger  inscribes 
similar  characters.  They  are  talking.  They  cannot 
speak  to  each  other,  but  they  can  write.  Long  ago 
one  borrowed  the  other's  written  language,  and  long 
before  that,  untold  generations  ago,  they  diverged 
from  a  common  root,  the  ancient  Mongol  stock. 

There  have  been  changes,  differentiations  brought 
about  by  diverse  conditions  and  infusions  of  other 
blood;  but  down  at  the  bottom  of  their  being, 
twisted  into  the  fibres  of  them,  is  a  heritage  in 
common  —  a  sameness  in  kind  which  time  has  not 
obliterated.  The  infusion  of  other  blood,  Malay, 
perhaps,  has  made  the  Japanese  a  race  of  mastery 
and  power,  a  fighting  race  through  all  its  history,  a 
race  which  has  always  despised  commerce  and 
exalted  fighting. 

To-day,  equipped  with  the  finest  machines  and 
systems  of  destruction  the  Caucasian  mind  has  de 
vised,  handling  machines  and  systems  with  remark 
able  and  deadly  accuracy,  this  rejuvenescent  Japan 
ese  race  has  embarked  on  a  course  of  conquest,  the 
goal  of  which  no  man  knows.  The  head  men  of 


28o  THE  YELLOW   PERIL 

Japan  are  dreaming  ambitiously,  and  the  people 
are  dreaming  blindly,  a  Napoleonic  dream.  And 
to  this  dream  the  Japanese  clings  and  will  cling 
with  bull-dog  tenacity.  The  soldier  shouting  "Nip 
pon,  Banzai!"  on  the  walls  of  Wiju,  the  widow  at 
home  in  her  paper  house  committing  suicide  so  that 
her  only  son,  her  sole  support,  may  go  to  the  front, 
are  both  expressing  the  unanimity  of  the  dream. 

The  late  disturbance  in  the  Far  East  marked  the 
clashing  of  the  dreams,  for  the  Slav,  too,  is  dream 
ing  greatly.  Granting  that  the  Japanese  can  hurl 
back  the  Slav  and  that  the  two  great  branches  of 
the  Anglo-Saxon  race  do  not  despoil  him  of  his 
spoils,  the  Japanese  dream  takes  on  substantiality. 
Japan's  population  is  no  larger  because  her  people 
have  continually  pressed  against  the  means  of  sub 
sistence.  But  given  poor,  empty  Korea  for  a  breed 
ing  colony  and  Manchuria  for  a  granary,  and  at 
once  the  Japanese  begins  to  increase  by  leaps  and 
bounds. 

Even  so,  he  would  not  of  himself  constitute  a  Brown 
Peril.  He  has  not  the  time  in  which  to  grow 
and  realize  the  dream.  He  is  only  forty-five  mil 
lions,  and  so  fast  does  the  economic  exploitation  of 


THE  YELLOW  PERIL  281 

the  planet  hurry  on  the  planet's  partition  amongst 
the  Western  peoples  that,  before  he  could  attain  the 
stature  requisite  to  menace,  he  would  see  the  West 
ern  giants  in  possession  of  the  very  stuff  of  his  dream. 
The  menace  to  the  Western  world  lies,  not  in  the 
little  brown  man,  but  in  the  four  hundred  millions 
of  yellow  men  should  the  little  brown  man  under 
take  their  management.  The  Chinese  is  not  dead 
to  new  ideas;  he  is  an  efficient  worker;  makes  a 
good  soldier,  and  is  wealthy  in  the  essential  materials 
of  a  machine  age.  Under  a  capable  management  he 
will  go  far.  The  Japanese  is  prepared  and  fit  to 
undertake  this  management.  Not  only  has  he 
proved  himself  an  apt  imitator  of  Western  material 
progress,  a  sturdy  worker,  and  a  capable  organizer, 
but  he  is  far  more  fit  to  manage  the  Chinese  than 
are  we.  The  baffling  enigma  of  the  Chinese  char 
acter  is  no  baffling  enigma  to  him.  He  understands 
as  we  could  never  school  ourselves  nor  hope  to  under 
stand.  Their  mental  processes  are  largely  the  same. 
He  thinks  with  the  same  thought-symbols  as  does 
the  Chinese,  and  he  thinks  in  the  same  peculiar 
grooves.  He  goes  on  where  we  are  balked  by 
the  obstacles  of  incomprehension.  He  takes  the 


282  THE  YELLOW   PERIL 

turning  which  we  cannot  perceive,  twists  around  the 
obstacle,  and,  presto !  is  out  of  sight  in  the  ramifica 
tions  of  the  Chinese  mind  where  we  cannot  follow. 

The  Chinese  has  been  called  the  type  of  perma 
nence,  and  well  he  has  merited  it,  dozing  as  he  has 
through  the  ages.  And  as  truly  was  the  Japanese 
the  type  of  permanence  up  to  a  generation  ago, 
when  he  suddenly  awoke  and  startled  the  world 
with  a  rejuvenescence  the  like  of  which  the  world 
had  never  seen  before.  The  ideas  of  the  West  were 
the  leaven  which  quickened  the  Japanese;  and  the 
ideas  of  the  West,  transmitted  by  the  Japanese  mind 
into  ideas  Japanese,  may  well  make  the  leaven 
powerful  enough  to  quicken  the  Chinese. 

We  have  had  Africa  for  the  Africander,  and  at  no 
distant  day  we  shall  hear  "Asia  for  the  Asiatic!" 
Four  hundred  million  indefatigable  workers  (deft, 
intelligent,  and  unafraid  to  die),  aroused  and  reju 
venescent,  managed  and  guided  by  forty-five  million 
additional  human  beings  who  are  splendid  fighting 
animals,  scientific  and  modern,  constitute  that  menace 
to  the  Western  world  which  has  been  well  named  the 
"Yellow  Peril."  The  possibility  of  race  adventure 
has  not  passed  away.  We  are  in  the  midst  of  our 


THE  YELLOW  PERIL  283 

own.  The  Slav  is  just  girding  himself  up  to  begin. 
Why  may  not  the  yellow  and  the  brown  start  out  on 
an  adventure  as  tremendous  as  our  own  and  more 
strikingly  unique  ? 

The  ultimate  success  of  such  an  adventure  the 
Western  mind  refuses  to  consider.  It  is  not  the 
nature  of  life  to  believe  itself  weak.  There  is  such 
a  thing  as  race  egotism  as  well  as  creature  egotism, 
and  a  very  good  thing  it  is.  In  the  first  place,  the 
Western  world  will  not  permit  the  rise  of  the  yellow 
peril.  It  is  firmly  convinced  that  it  will  not  permit 
the  yellow  and  the  brown  to  wax  strong  and  menace 
its  peace  and  comfort.  It  advances  this  idea  with 
persistency,  and  delivers  itself  of  long  arguments 
showing  how  and  why  this  menace  will  not  be  per 
mitted  to  arise.  To-day,  far  more  voices  are  en 
gaged  in  denying  the  yellow  peril  than  in  prophesy 
ing  it.  The  Western  world  is  warned,  if  not  armed, 
against  the  possibility  of  it. 

In  the  second  place,  there  is  a  weakness  inherent 
in  the  brown  man  which  will  bring  his  adventure 
to  naught.  From  the  West  he  has  borrowed  all  our 
material  achievement  and  passed  our  ethical  achieve 
ment  by.  Our  engines  of  production  and  destruc- 


284  THE  YELLOW   PERIL 

tion  he  has  made  his.  What  was  once  solely  ours 
he  now  duplicates,  rivalling  our  merchants  in  the 
commerce  of  the  East,  thrashing  the  Russian  on 
sea  and  land.  A  marvellous  imitator  truly,  but  imi 
tating  us  only  in  things  material.  Things  spiritual 
cannot  be  imitated;  they  must  be  felt  and  lived, 
woven  into  the  very  fabric  of  life,  and  here  the 
Japanese  fails. 

It  required  no  revolution  of  his  nature  to  learn  to 
calculate  the  range  and  fire  a  field-gun  or  to  march 
the  goose-step.  It  was  a  mere  matter  of  training. 
Our  material  achievement  is  the  product  of  our 
intellect.  It  is  knowledge,  and  knowledge,  like 
coin,  is  interchangeable.  It  is  not  wrapped  up  in 
the  heredity  of  the  new-born  child,  but  is  some 
thing  to  be  acquired  afterward.  Not  so  with  our 
soul  stuff,  which  is  the  product  of  an  evolution 
which  goes  back  to  the  raw  beginnings  of  the  race. 
Our  soul  stuff  is  not  a  coin  to  be  pocketed  by  the  first 
chance  comer.  The  Japanese  cannot  pocket  it  any 
more  than  he  can  thrill  to  short  Saxon  words  or  we 
can  thrill  to  Chinese  hieroglyphics.  The  leopard 
cannot  change  its  spots,  nor  can  the  Japanese,  nor 
can  we.  We  are  thumbed  by  the  ages  into  what  we 


THE  YELLOW   PERIL  285 

are,  and  by  no  conscious  inward  effort  can  we  in  a 
day  rethumb  ourselves.  Nor  can  the  Japanese  in 
a  day,  or  a  generation,  rethumb  himself  in  our 
image. 

Back  of  our  own  great  race  adventure,  back  of 
our  robberies  by  sea  and  land,  our  lusts  and  vio 
lences  and  all  the  evil  things  we  have  done,  there  is 
a  certain  integrity,  a  sternness  of  conscience,  a  melan 
choly  responsibility  of  life,  a  sympathy  and  com 
radeship  and  warm  human  feel,  which  is  ours,  in 
dubitably  ours,  and  which  we  cannot  teach  to  the 
Oriental  as  we  would  teach  logarithms  or  the  tra 
jectory  of  projectiles.  That  we  have  groped  for  the 
way  of  right  conduct  and  agonized  over  the  soul  be 
tokens  our  spiritual  endowment.  Though  we  have 
strayed  often  and  far  from  righteousness,  the  voices 
of  the  seers  have  always  been  raised,  and  we  have 
harked  back  to  the  bidding  of  conscience.  The 
colossal  fact  of  our  history  is  that  we  have  made  the 
religion  of  Jesus  Christ  our  religion.  No  matter  how 
dark  in  error  and  deed,  ours  has  been  a  history  of 
spiritual  struggle  and  endeavor.  We  are  preemi 
nently  a  religious  race,  which  is  another  way  of  say 
ing  that  we  are  a  right-seeking  race. 


286  THE  YELLOW  PERIL 

"What  do  you  think  of  the  Japanese?"  was 
asked  an  American  woman  after  she  had  lived  some 
time  in  Japan.  "It  seems  to  me  that  they  have  no 
souL"  was  her  answer. 

This  must  not  be  taken  to  mean  that  the  Japanese 
is  without  soul.  But  it  serves  to  illustrate  the 
enormous  difference  between  their  souls  and  this 
woman's  soul.  There  was  no  feel,  no  speech,  no 
recognition.  This  Western  soul  did  not  dream  that 
the  Eastern  soul  existed,  it  was  so  different,  so 
totally  different. 

Religion,  as  a  battle  for  the  right  in  our  sense  of 
right,  as  a  yearning  and  a  strife  for  spiritual  good 
and  purity,  is  unknown  to  the  Japanese.  Measured 
by  what  religion  means  to  us,  the  Japanese  is  a  race 
without  religion.  Yet  it  has  a  religion,  and  who 
shall  say  that  it  is  not  as  great  a  religion  as  ours,  nor 
as  efficacious  ?  As  one  Japanese  has  written :  — 

"Our  reflection  brought  into  prominence  not  so 
much  the  moral  as  the  national  consciousness  of  the 
individual.  .  .  .  To  us  the  country  is  more  than 
land  and  soil  from  which  to  mine  gold  or  reap  grain 
—  it  is  the  sacred  abode  of  the  gods,  the  spirits  of 
our  forefathers ;  to  us  the  Emperor  is  more  than  the 


THE  YELLOW  PERIL  287 

Arch  Constable  of  a  Rechisstaat,  or  even  the  Patron 
of  a  Culturstaat;  he  is  the  bodily  representative  of 
heaven  on  earth,  blending  in  his  person  its  power 
and  its  mercy." 

The  religion  of  Japan  is  practically  a  worship  of 
the  State  itself.  Patriotism  is  the  expression  of  this 
worship.  The  Japanese  mind  does  not  split  hairs 
as  to  whether  the  Emperor  is  Heaven  incarnate  or 
the  State  incarnate.  So  far  as  the  Japanese  are 
concerned,  the  Emperor  lives,  is  himself  deity.  The 
Emperor  is  the  object  to  live  for  and  to  die  for. 
The  Japanese  is  not  an  individualist.  He  has  de 
veloped  national  consciousness  instead  of  moral 
consciousness.  He  is  not  interested  in  his  own 
moral  welfare  except  in  so  far  as  it  is  the  welfare  of 
the  State.  The  honor  of  the  individual,  per  se,  does 
not  exist.  Only  exists  the  honor  of  the  State,  which 
is  his  honor.  He  does  not  look  upon  himself  as  a 
free  agent,  working  out  his  own  personal  salvation. 
Spiritual  agonizing  is  unknown  to  him.  He  has  a 
"sense  of  calm  trust  in  fate,  a  quiet  submission  to 
the  inevitable,  a  stoic  composure  in  sight  of  dan 
ger  or  calamity,  a  disdain  of  life  and  friendliness 
with  death."  He  relates  himself  to  the  State  as, 


288  THE  YELLOW   PERIL 

amongst  bees,  the  worker  is  related  to  the  hive; 
himself  nothing,  the  State  everything;  his  reasons 
for  existence  the  exaltation  and  glorification  of  the 
State. 

The  most  admired  quality  to-day  of  the  Japanese 
is  his  patriotism.  The  Western  world  is  in  rhap 
sodies  over  it,  unwittingly  measuring  the  Japanese 
patriotism  by  its  own  conceptions  of  patriotism. 
"For  God,  my  country,  and  the  Czar!"  cries  the 
Russian  patriot;  but  in  the  Japanese  mind  there  is 
no  differentiation  between  the  three.  The  Emperor 
is  the  Emperor,  and  God  and  country  as  well.  The 
patriotism  of  the  Japanese  is  blind  and  unswerving 
loyalty  to  what  is  practically  an  absolutism.  The 
Emperor  can  do  no  wrong,  nor  can  the  five  am 
bitious  great  men  who  have  his  ear  and  control  the 
destiny  of  Japan. 

No  great  race  adventure  can  go  far  nor  endure 
long  which  has  no  deeper  foundation  than  material 
success,  no  higher  prompting  than  conquest  for  con 
quest's  sake  and  mere  race  glorification.  To  go  far 
and  to  endure,  it  must  have  behind  it  an  ethical  im 
pulse,  a  sincerely  conceived  righteousness.  But  it 
must  be  taken  into  consideration  that  the  above 


THE  YELLOW   PERIL  289 

postulate  is  itself  a  product  of  Western  race-egotism, 
urged  by  our  belief  in  our  own  righteousness  and 
fostered  by  a  faith  in  ourselves  which  may  be  as 
erroneous  as  are  most  fond  race  fancies.  So  be  it. 
The  world  is  whirling  faster  to-day  than  ever  before. 
It  has  gained  impetus.  Affairs  rush  to  conclusion. 
The  Far  East  is  the  point  of  contact  of  the  adven 
turing  Western  people  as  well  as  of  the  Asiatic.  We 
shall  not  have  to  wait  for  our  children's  time  nor 
our  children's  children.  We  shall  ourselves  see  and 
largely  determine  the  adventure  of  the  Yellow  and 
the  Brown. 

FENG-WANG-CHENG,  MANCHURIA, 
June,  1904. 


WHAT  LIFE  MEANS  TO  ME 


WHAT  LIFE  MEANS  TO  ME 

I  WAS  born  in  the  working-class.     Early  I  dis 
covered  enthusiasm,  ambition,  and  ideals;    and 
to    satisfy    these    became    the    problem   of  my 
child-life.     My  environment  was  crude   and   rough 
and  raw.     I  had  no  outlook,  but  an  uplook  rather. 
My  place  in  society  was  at  the  bottom.     Here  life 
offered   nothing   but   sordidness    and   wretchedness, 
both  of  the  flesh  and  the  spirit;    for  here  flesh  and 
spirit  were  alike  starved  and  tormented. 

Above  me  towered  the  colossal  edifice  of  society, 
and  to  my  mind  the  only  way  out  was  up.  Into 
this  edifice  I  early  resolved  to  climb.  Up  above, 
men  wore  black  clothes  and  boiled  shirts,  and  women 
dressed  in  beautiful  gowns.  Also,  there  were  good 
things  to  eat,  and  there  was  plenty  to  eat.  This 
much  for  the  flesh.  Then  there  were  the  things  of 
the  spirit.  Up  above  me,  I  knew,  were  unselfish 
nesses  of  the  spirit,  clean  and  noble  thinking,  keen 
intellectual  living.  I  knew  all  this  because  I  read 

293 


294       WHAT  LIFE  MEANS  TO  ME 

" Seaside  Library"  novels,  in  which,  with  the  ex 
ception  of  the  villains  and  adventuresses,  all  men 
and  women  thought  beautiful  thoughts,  spoke  a 
beautiful  tongue,  and  performed  glorious  deeds. 
In  short,  as  I  accepted  the  rising  of  the  sun,  I  ac 
cepted  that  up  above  me  was  all  that  was  fine  and 
noble  and  gracious,  all  that  gave  decency  and  dig 
nity  to  life,  all  that  made  life  worth  living  and  that 
remunerated  one  for  his  travail  and  misery. 

But  it  is  not  particularly  easy  for  one  to  climb  up 
out  of  the  working-class  —  especially  if  he  is  handi 
capped  by  the  possession  of  ideals  and  illusions.  I 
lived  on  a  ranch  in  California,  and  I  was  hard  put 
to  find  the  ladder  whereby  to  climb.  I  early  in 
quired  the  rate  of  interest  on  invested  money,  and 
worried  my  child's  brain  into  an  understanding  of 
the  virtues  and  excellencies  of  that  remarkable  in 
vention  of  man,  compound  interest.  Further,  I  as 
certained  the  current  rates  of  wages  for  workers  of 
all  ages,  and  the  cost  of  living.  From  all  this  data 
I  concluded  that  if  I  began  immediately  and  worked 
and  saved  until  I  was  fifty  years  of  age,  I  could  then 
stop  working  and  enter  into  participation  in  a  fair 
portion  of  the  delights  and  goodnesses  that  would 


WHAT  LIFE  MEANS  TO   ME        295 

then  be  open  to  me  higher  up  in  society.  Of  course, 
I  resolutely  determined  not  to  marry,  while  I  quite 
forgot  to  consider  at  all  that  great  rock  of  disaster 
in  the  working-class  world  —  sickness. 

But  the  life  that  was  in  me  demanded  more  than 
a  meagre  existence  of  scraping  and  scrimping. 
Also,  at  ten  years  of  age,  I  became  a  newsboy  on 
the  streets  of  a  city,  and  found  myself  with  a  changed 
uplook.  All  about  me  were  still  the  same  sordid- 
ness  and  wretchedness,  and  up  above  me  was  still 
the  same  paradise  waiting  to  be  gained;  but  the 
ladder  whereby  to  climb  was  a  different  one.  It 
was  now  the  ladder  of  business.  Why  save  my 
earnings  and  invest  in  government  bonds,  when,  by 
buying  two  newspapers  for  five  cents,  with  a  turn  of 
the  wrist  I  could  sell  them  for  ten  cents  and  double 
my  capital  ?  The  business  ladder  was  the  ladder 
for  me,  and  I  had  a  vision  of  myself  becoming  a 
baldheaded  and  successful  merchant  prince. 

Alas  for  visions !  When  I  was  sixteen  I  had  al 
ready  earned  the  title  of  "prince/'  But  this  title 
was  given  me  by  a  gang  of  cut-throats  and  thieves, 
by  whom  I  was  called  "The  Prince  of  the  Oyster 
Pirates."  And  at  that  time  I  had  climbed  the  first 


296       WHAT  LIFE  MEANS  TO   ME 

rung  of  the  business  ladder.  I  was  a  capitalist. 
I  owned  a  boat  and  a  complete  oyster-pirating  outfit. 
I  had  begun  to  exploit  my  fellow-creatures.  I  had 
a  crew  of  one  man.  As  captain  and  owner  I  took 
two-thirds  of  the  spoils,  and  gave  the  crew  one- 
third,  though  the  crew  worked  just  as  hard  as  I  did 
and  risked  just  as  much  his  life  and  liberty. 

This  one  rung  was  the  height  I  climbed  up  the 
business  ladder.  One  night  I  went  on  a  raid  amongst 
the  Chinese  fishermen.  Ropes  and  nets  were  worth 
dollars  and  cents.  It  was  robbery,  I  grant,  but  it 
was  precisely  the  spirit  of  capitalism.  The  capital 
ist  takes  away  the  possessions  of  his  fellow-creatures 
by  means  of  a  rebate,  or  of  a  betrayal  of  trust,  or 
by  the  purchase  of  senators  and  supreme-court 
judges.  I  was  merely  crude.  That  was  the  only 
difference.  I  used  a  gun. 

But  my  crew  that  night  was  one  of  those  ineffi- 
cients  against  whom  the  capitalist  is  wont  to  fulmi 
nate,  because,  forsooth,  such  inefficients  increase 
expenses  and  reduce  dividends.  My  crew  did  both. 
What  of  his  carelessness  he  set  fire  to  the  big  main 
sail  and  totally  destroyed  it.  There  weren't  any 
dividends  that  night,  and  the  Chinese  fishermen 


WHAT  LIFE  MEANS   TO   ME        297 

were  richer  by  the  nets  and  ropes  we  did  not  get. 
I  was  bankrupt,  unable  just  then  to  pay  sixty-five 
dollars  for  a  new  mainsail.  I  left  my  boat  at  anchor 
and  went  off  on  a  bay-pirate  boat  on  a  raid  up  the 
Sacramento  River.  While  away  on  this  trip,  an 
other  gang  of  bay  pirates  raided  my  boat.  They 
stole  everything,  even  the  anchors;  and  later  on, 
when  I  recovered  the  drifting  hulk,  I  sold  it  for 
twenty  dollars.  I  had  slipped  back  the  one  rung  I 
had  climbed,  and  never  again  did  I  attempt  the 
business  ladder. 

From  then  on  I  was  mercilessly  exploited  by 
other  capitalists.  I  had  the  muscle,  and  they  made 
money  out  of  it  while  I  made  but  a  very  indifferent 
living  out  of  it.  I  was  a  sailor  before  the  mast,  a 
longshoreman,  a  roustabout;  I  worked  in  canneries, 
and  factories,  and  laundries;  I  mowed  lawns,  and 
cleaned  carpets,  and  washed  windows.  And  I 
never  got  the  full  product  of  my  toil.  I  looked  at 
the  daughter  of  the  cannery  owner,  in  her  carriage, 
and  knew  that  it  was  my  muscle,  in  part,  that  helped 
drag  along  that  carriage  on  its  rubber  tires.  I 
looked  at  the  son  of  the  factory  owner,  going  to 
college,  and  knew  that  it  was  my  muscle  that  helped, 


298       WHAT  LIFE   MEANS   TO   ME 

in  part,  to  pay  for  the  wine  and  good  fellowship  he 
enjoyed. 

But  I  did  not  resent  this.  It  was  all  in  the  game. 
They  were  the  strong.  Very  well,  I  was  strong.  I 
would  carve  my  way  to  a  place  amongst  them  and 
make  money  out  of  the  muscles  of  other  men. 
I  was  not  afraid  of  work.  I  loved  hard  work. 
I  would  pitch  in  and  work  harder  than  ever  and 
eventually  become  a  pillar  of  society. 

And  just  then,  as  luck  would  have  it,  I  found  an 
employer  that  was  of  the  same  mind.  I  was  will 
ing  to  work,  and  he  was  more  than  willing  that  I 
should  work.  I  thought  I  was  learning  a  trade.  In 
reality,  I  had  displaced  two  men.  I  thought  he 
was  making  an  electrician  out  of  me;  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  he  was  making  fifty  dollars  per  month  out 
of  me.  The  two  men  I  had  displaced  had  received 
forty  dollars  each  per  month ;  I  was  doing  the  work 
of  both  for  thirty  dollars  per  month. 

This  employer  worked  me  nearly  to  death.  A 
man  may  love  oysters,  but  too  many  oysters  will  dis 
incline  him  toward  that  particular  diet.  And  so 
with  me.  Too  much  work  sickened  me.  I  did  not 
wish  ever  to  see  work  again.  I  fled  from  work.  I 


WHAT  LIFE  MEANS   TO  ME        299 

became  a  tramp,  begging  my  way  from  door  to  door, 
wandering  over  the  United  States  and  sweating 
bloody  sweats  in  slums  and  prisons. 

I  had  been  born  in  the  working-class,  and  I  was 
now,  at  the  age  of  eighteen,  beneath  the  point  at 
which  I  had  started.  I  was  down  in  the  cellar  of 
society,  down  in  the  subterranean  depths  of  misery 
about  which  it  is  neither  nice  nor  proper  to  speak. 
I  was  in  the  pit,  the  abyss,  the  human  cesspool,  the 
shambles  and  the  charnel-house  of  our  civilization. 
This  is  the  part  of  the  edifice  of  society  that  society 
chooses  to  ignore.  Lack  of  space  compels  me  here 
to  ignore  it,  and  I  shall  say  only  that  the  things  I 
there  saw  gave  me  a  terrible  scare. 

I  was  scared  into  thinking.  I  saw  the  naked  sim 
plicities  of  the  complicated  civilization  in  which  I 
lived.  Life  was  a  matter  of  food  and  shelter.  In 
order  to  get  food  and  shelter  men  sold  things.  The 
merchant  sold  shoes,  the  politician  sold  his  man 
hood,  and  the  representative  of  the  people,  with  ex 
ceptions,  of  course,  sold  his  trust;  while  nearly  all 
sold  their  honor.  Women,  too,  whether  on  the 
street  or  in  the  holy  bond  of  wedlock,  were  prone  to 
sell  their  flesh.  All  things  were  commodities,  all 


300        WHAT  LIFE   MEANS  TO   ME 

people  bought  and  sold.  The  one  commodity  that 
labor  had  to  sell  was  muscle.  The  honor  of  labor 
had  no  price  in  the  market-place.  Labor  had  muscle, 
and  muscle  alone,  to  sell. 

But  there  was  a  difference,  a  vital  difference. 
Shoes  and  trust  and  honor  had  a  way  of  renewing 
themselves.  They  were  imperishable  stocks.  Mus 
cle,  on  the  other  hand,  did  not  renew.  As  the  shoe 
merchant  sold  shoes,  he  continued  to  replenish  his 
stock.  But  there  was  no  way  of  replenishing  the 
laborer's  stock  of  muscle.  The  more  he  sold  of 
his  muscle,  the  less  of  it  remained  to  him.  It  was 
his  one  commodity,  and  each  day  his  stock  of 
it  diminished.  In  the  end,  if  he  did  not  die 
before,  he  sold  out  and  put  up  his  shutters.  He 
was  a  muscle  bankrupt,  and  nothing  remained  to 
him  but  to  go  down  into  the  cellar  of  society  and 
perish  miserably. 

I  learned,  further,  that  brain  was  likewise  a  com 
modity.  It,  too,  was  different  from  muscle.  A 
brain  seller  was  only  at  his  prime  when  he  was  fifty 
or  sixty  years  old,  and  his  wares  were  fetching 
higher  prices  than  ever.  But  a  laborer  was  worked 
out  or  broken  down  at  forty-five  or  fifty.  I  had 


WHAT  LIFE   MEANS   TO   ME        301 

been  in  the  cellar  of  society,  and  I  did  not  like  the 
place  as  a  habitation.  The  pipes  and  drains  were 
unsanitary,  and  the  air  was  bad  to  breathe.  If  I 
could  not  live  on  the  parlor  floor  of  society,  I  could, 
at  any  rate,  have  a  try  at  the  attic.  It  was  true,  the 
diet  there  was  slim,  but  the  air  at  least  was  pure. 
So  I  resolved  to  sell  no  more  muscle,  and  to  become 
a  vender  of  brains. 

Then  began  a  frantic  pursuit  of  knowledge.  I  re 
turned  to  California  and  opened  the  books.  While 
thus  equipping  myself  to  become  a  brain  merchant, 
it  was  inevitable  that  I  should  delve  into  sociology. 
There  I  found,  in  a  certain  class  of  books,  scien 
tifically  formulated,  the  simple  sociological  concepts 
I  had  already  worked  out  for  myself.  Other  and 
greater  minds,  before  I  was  born,  had  worked  out 
all  that  I  had  thought  and  a  vast  deal  more.  I  dis 
covered  that  I  was  a  socialist. 

The  socialists  were  revolutionists,  inasmuch  as 
they  struggled  to  overthrow  the  society  of  the  present, 
and  out  of  the  material  to  build  the  society  of  the 
future.  I,  too,  was  a  socialist  and  a  revolutionist. 
I  joined  the  groups  of  working-class  and  intellectual 
revolutionists,  and  for  the  first  time  came  into  intel- 


302        WHAT  LIFE   MEANS   TO   ME 

lectual  living.  Here  I  found  keen-flashing  intellects 
and  brilliant  wits;  for  here  I  met  strong  and  alert- 
brained,  withal  horny-handed,  members  of  the  work 
ing-class;  unfrocked  preachers  too  wide  in  their 
Christianity  for  any  congregation  of  Mammon- 
worshippers;  professors  broken  on  the  wheel  of  uni 
versity  subservience  to  the  ruling  class  and  flung 
out  because  they  were  quick  with  knowledge  which 
they  strove  to  apply  to  the  affairs  of  mankind. 

Here  I  found,  also,  warm  faith  in  the  human, 
glowing  idealism,  sweetnesses  of  unselfishness,  re 
nunciation,  and  martyrdom  —  all  the  splendid,  sting 
ing  things  of  the  spirit.  Here  life  was  clean,  noble, 
and  alive.  Here  life  rehabilitated  itself,  became 
wonderful  and  glorious;  and  I  was  glad  to  be  alive. 
I  was  in  touch  with  great  souls  who  exalted  flesh 
and  spirit  over  dollars  and  cents,  and  to  whom  the 
thin  wail  of  the  starved  slum  child  meant  more  than 
all  the  pomp  and  circumstance  of  commercial  ex 
pansion  and  world  empire.  All  about  me  were 
nobleness  of  purpose  and  heroism  of  effort,  and  my 
days  and  nights  were  sunshine  and  starshine,  all  fire 
and  dew,  with  before  my  eyes,  ever  burning  and 
blazing,  the  Holy  Grail,  Christ's  own  Grail,  the 


WHAT  LIFE   MEANS   TO  ME       303 

warm  human,  long-suffering  and  maltreated,  but  to 
be  rescued  and  saved  at  the  last. 

And  I,  poor  foolish  I,  deemed  all  this  to  be  a 
mere  foretaste  of  the  delights  of  living  I  should 
find  higher  above  me  in  society.  I  had  lost  many 
illusions  since  the  day  I  read  "Seaside  Library" 
novels  on  the  California  ranch.  I  was  destined  to 
lose  many  of  the  illusions  I  still  retained. 

As  a  brain  merchant  I  was  a  success.  Society 
opened  its  portals  to  me.  I  entered  right  in  on  the 
parlor  floor,  and  my  disillusionment  proceeded 
rapidly.  I  sat  down  to  dinner  with  the  masters  of 
society,  and  with  the  wives  and  daughters  of  the 
masters  of  society.  The  women  were  gowned 
beautifully,  I  admit;  but  to  my  naive  surprise  I 
discovered  that  they  were  of  the  same  clay  as  all 
the  rest  of  the  women  I  had  known  down  below  in 
the  cellar.  "The  colonel's  lady  and  Judy  O'Grady 
were  sisters  under  their  skins"  —  and  gowns. 

It  was  not  this,  however,  so  much  as  their  mate 
rialism,  that  shocked  me.  It  is  true,  these  beauti 
fully  gowned,  beautiful  women  prattled  sweet  little 
ideals  and  dear  little  moralities;  but  in  spite  of  their 
prattle  the  dominant  key  of  the  life  they  lived  was 


3o4       WHAT  LIFE  MEANS  TO   ME 

was  materialistic.  And  they  were  so  sentimentally 
selfish  !  They  assisted  in  all  kinds  of  sweet  little 
charities,  and  informed  one  of  the  fact,  while  all  the 
time  the  food  they  ate  and  the  beautiful  clothes 
they  wore  were  bought  out  of  dividends  stained  with 
the  blood  of  child  labor,  and  sweated  labor,  and  of 
prostitution  itself.  When  I  mentioned  such  facts, 
expecting  in  my  innocence  that  these  sisters  of  Judy 
O'Grady  would  at  once  strip  off  their  blood-dyed 
silks  and  jewels,  they  became  excited  and  angry,  and 
read  me  preachments  about  the  lack  of  thrift,  the 
drink,  and  the  innate  depravity  that  caused  all  the 
misery  in  society's  cellar.  When  I  mentioned  that 
I  couldn't  quite  see  that  it  was  the  lack  of  thrift, 
the  intemperance,  and  the  depravity  of  a  half-starved 
child  of  six  that  made  it  work  twelve  hours  every 
night  in  a  Southern  cotton  mill,  these  sisters  of 
Judy  O'Grady  attacked  my  private  life  and  called 
me  an  "agitator"  —  as  though  that,  forsooth, 
settled  the  argument. 

Nor  did  I  fare  better  with  the  masters  themselves. 
I  had  expected  to  find  men  who  were  clean,  noble, 
and  alive,  whose  ideals  were  clean,  noble,  and  alive. 
I  went  about  amongst  the  men  who  sat  in  the  high 


WHAT  LIFE   MEANS   TO  ME        305 

places  —  the  preachers,  the  politicians,  the  business 
men,  the  professors,  and  the  editors.  I  ate  meat 
with  them,  drank  wine  with  them,  automobiled  with 
them,  and  studied  them.  It  is  true,  I  found  many 
that  were  clean  and  noble;  but  with  rare  exceptions, 
they  were  not  alive.  I  do  verily  believe  I  could 
count  the  exceptions  on  the  fingers  of  my  two  hands. 
Where  they  were  not  alive  with  rottenness,  quick 
with  unclean  life,  they  were  merely  the  unburied 
dead  —  clean  and  noble,  like  well-preserved  mum 
mies,  but  not  alive.  In  this  connection  I  may  es 
pecially  mention  the  professors  I  met,  the  men  who 
live  up  to  that  decadent  university  ideal,  "the  pas 
sionless  pursuit  of  passionless  intelligence." 

I  met  men  who  invoked  the  name  of  the  Prince 
of  Peace  in  their  diatribes  against  war,  and  who 
put  rifles  in  the  hands  of  Pinkertons  with  which  to 
shoot  down  strikers  in  their  own  factories.  I  met 
men  incoherent  with  indignation  at  the  brutality  of 
prize-fighting,  and  who,  at  the  same  time,  were 
parties  to  the  adulteration  of  food  that  killed  each 
year  more  babies  than  even  red-handed  Herod  had 
killed. 

I  talked  in  hotels  and  clubs  and  homes  and  Pull- 


3o6        WHAT   LIFE   MEANS   TO   ME 

mans  and  steamer-chairs  with  captains  of  industry, 
and  marvelled  at  how  little  travelled  they  were  in  the 
realm  of  intellect.  On  the  other  hand,  I  discovered 
that  their  intellect,  in  the  business  sense,  was  ab 
normally  developed.  Also,  I  discovered  that  their 
morality,  where  business  was  concerned,  was  nil. 

This  delicate,  aristocratic-featured  gentleman,  was 
a  dummy  director  and  a  tool  of  corporations  that 
secretly  robbed  widows  and  orphans.  This  gentle 
man,  who  collected  fine  editions  and  was  an  especial 
patron  of  literature,  paid  blackmail  to  a  heavy- 
jowled,  black-browed  boss  of  a  municipal  machine. 
This  editor,  who  published  patent  medicine  ad 
vertisements  and  did  not  dare  print  the  truth  in  his 
paper  about  said  patent  medicines  for  fear  of  losing 
the  advertising,  called  me  a  scoundrelly  demagogue 
because  I  told  him  that  his  political  economy  was 
antiquated  and  that  his  biology  was  contemporaneous 
with  Pliny. 

This  senator  was  the  tool  and  the  slave,  the  little 
puppet  of  a  gross,  uneducated  machine  boss;  so 
was  this  governor  and  this  supreme  court  judge; 
and  all  three  rode  on  railroad  passes.  This  man, 
talking  soberly  and  earnestly  about  the  beauties  of 


WHAT  LIFE  MEANS   TO  ME        307 

idealism  and  the  goodness  of  God,  had  just  be 
trayed  his  comrades  in  a  business  deal.  This  man, 
a  pillar  of  the  church  and  heavy  contributor  to 
foreign  missions,  worked  his  shop  girls  ten  hours  a 
day  on  a  starvation  wage  and  thereby  directly  en 
couraged  prostitution.  This  man,  who  endowed 
chairs  in  universities,  perjured  himself  in  courts  of 
law  over  a  matter  of  dollars  and  cents.  And  this 
railroad  magnate  broke  his  word  as  a  gentleman  and 
a  Christian  when  he  granted  a  secret  rebate  to  one 
of  two  captains  of  industry  locked  together  in  a 
struggle  to  the  death. 

It  was  the  same  everywhere,  crime  and  betrayal, 
betrayal  and  crime  —  men  who  were  alive,  but  who 
were  neither  clean  nor  noble,  men  who  were  clean 
and  noble  but  who  were  not  alive.  Then  there  was 
a  great,  hopeless  mass,  neither  noble  nor  alive,  but 
merely  clean.  It  did  not  sin  positively  nor  de 
liberately;  but  it  did  sin  passively  and  ignorantly  by 
acquiescing  in  the  current  immorality  and  profiting 
by  it.  Had  it  been  noble  and  alive  it  would  not 
have  been  ignorant,  and  it  would  have  refused  to 
share  in  the  profits  of  betrayal  and  crime. 

I  discovered  that  I  did  not  like  to  live  on  the 


3o8        WHAT   LIFE   MEANS   TO   ME 

parlor  floor  of  society.  Intellectually  I  was  bored. 
Morally  and  spiritually  I  was  sickened.  I  remem 
bered  my  intellectuals  and  idealists,  my  unfrocked 
preachers,  broken  professors,  and  clean-minded,  class- 
conscious  workingmen.  I  remembered  my  days 
and  nights  of  sunshine  and  starshine,  where  life  was 
all  a  wild  sweet  wonder,  a  spiritual  paradise  of  un 
selfish  adventure  and  ethical  romance.  And  I  saw 
before  me,  ever  blazing  and  burning,  the  Holy 
Grail. 

So  I  went  back  to  the  working-class,  in  which  I  had 
been  born  and  where  I  belonged.  I  care  no  longer 
to  climb.  The  imposing  edifice  of  society  above  my 
head  holds  no  delights  for  me.  It  is  the  founda 
tion  of  the  edifice  that  interests  me.  There  I  am  con 
tent  to  labor,  crowbar  in  hand,  shoulder  to  shoulder 
with  intellectuals,  idealists,  and  class-conscious  work 
ingmen,  getting  a  solid  pry  now  and  again  and  set 
ting  the  whole  edifice  rocking.  Some  day,  when  we 
get  a  few  more  hands  and  crowbars  to  work,  we'll 
topple  it  over,  along  with  all  its  rotten  life  and  un- 
buried  dead,  its  monstrous  selfishness  and  sodden 
materialism.  Then  we'll  cleanse  the  cellar  and 
build  a  new  habitation  for  mankind,  in  which  there 


WHAT  LIFE  MEANS  TO  ME        309 

will  be  no  parlor  floor,  in  which  all  the  rooms  will 
be  bright  and  airy,  and  where  the  air  that  is  breathed 
will  be  clean,  noble,  and  alive. 

Such  is  my  outlook.  I  look  forward  to  a  time 
when  man  shall  progress  upon  something  worthier 
and  higher  than  his  stomach,  when  there  will  be  a 
finer  incentive  to  impel  men  to  action  than  the  in 
centive  of  to-day,  which  is  the  incentive  of  the  stomach. 
I  retain  my  belief  in  the  nobility  and  excellence  of 
the  human.  I  believe  that  spiritual  sweetness  and 
unselfishness  will  conquer  the  gross  gluttony  of 
to-day.  And  last  of  all,  my  faith  is  in  the  working- 
class.  As  some  Frenchman  has  said,  "The  stair 
way  of  time  is  ever  echoing  with  the  wooden  shoe 
going  up,  the  polished  boot  descending." 

NEWTON,  IOWA, 
November,  1905. 


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force  of  the  story,  the  strong  sweeping  strokes  with  which  the 
pictures  of  the  northern  wilds  and  the  life  therein  are  painted 
by  the  narrator,  and  the  insight  given  into  the  soul  of  the 
primitive  in  nature.  .  .  .  More  than  that,  it  is  one  of  the 
very  best  stories  of  the  year,  and  one  that  will  not  be 
forgotten."  —  The  Plain  Dealer,  Cleveland. 


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Jack  London's  Short  Stories 

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THE  GAME 
A  Transcript  from  Real  Life 

"  It  is  told  with  such  a  glow  of  imaginative  illusion,  with  such 
intense  dramatic  vigor,  with  such  effective  audacity  of  phrase, 
that  it  almost  seems  as  if  the  author's  appeal  was  to  the  bodily 
eye  as  much  as  to  the  inner  mentality,  and  that  the  events  are 
actually  happening  before  the  reader." —  The  New  York 
Herald. 

CHILDREN  OF  THE  FROST 

"Told  with  something  of  that  same  vigorous  and  honest 
manliness  and  indifference  with  which  Mr.  Kipling  makes 
unbegging  yet  direct  and  unfailing  appeal  to  the  sympathy  of 
his  reader."  —  Richmond  Despatch. 

THE  FAITH  OF  MEN 

"  Mr.  London's  art  as  a  story-teller  nowhere  manifests  itself 
more  strongly  than  in  the  swift,  dramatic  close  of  his  stories. 
There  is  no  hesitancy  or  uncertainty  of  touch.  From  the 
start  the  story  moves  straight  to  the  inevitable  conclusion." 

—  Courier  Journal. 

MOON  FACE 

"  Each  of  the  stories  is  unique  in  its  individual  way,  weird  and 
uncanny,  and  told  in  Mr.  London's  vigorous,  compelling  style." 

—  Interior. 

TALES  OF  THE  FISH  PATROL 

"That  they  are  vividly  told,  hardly  need  be  said,  for  Jack 
London  is  a  realist  as  well  as  a  writer  of  thrilling  romances." 

—  Cleveland  Plain  Dealer. 

LOVE  OF  LIFE 

"  Jack  London  is  at  his  best  with  the  short  story  .  .  .  clear- 
cut,  sharp,  incisive,  with  the  tang  of  the  frost  in  it."  —  Record- 
Herald,  Chicago. 


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